


The French Kiss Job

by quirkapotamus



Series: Phantom Season 6 [1]
Category: Leverage
Genre: Action/Adventure, Case Fic, Continuation, Family, Gen, Gen Work, Lucille's French Cousin, Paris (City), Post-Series, Season/Series 06, Team, Teamwork
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-01-25
Updated: 2015-04-03
Packaged: 2018-01-09 23:56:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 24
Words: 83,445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1152341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quirkapotamus/pseuds/quirkapotamus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Three months after Nate and Sophie's retirement from Leverage Consulting & Associates, Parker, Eliot, and Hardison are struggling to work on their own more than anyone expected. Eliot sees the writing on the wall, but Parker and Hardison convince him to meet with one last client. Is this the job that will save the team, or the one that will finally break them?</p><p>Phantom Season 6.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is the "Season Premiere" of my personal take on the phantom Season 6. Our story begins with a focus on Parker, Eliot, and Hardison, but rest assured that Nate and Sophie aren't gone forever.
> 
> Spoilers through the end of the series.

  
  


                The light on the keypad changed from red to green. Easy peasy.

                Sure, some companies had Sterankos, but then others would have easy fingerprint scanners like this one. Parker wasn't one hundred percent sure which one she preferred. Sometimes it was nice to play with the harder security systems, but she didn't always have time to give them the love and tender care they deserved. She already looked forward to her next vacation--those were the times when she could afford to hang around, cracking safes for fun. But whenever she was on a job for the Leverage team, there was always someone in her ear telling her to hurry up.

                Literally.

                "Parker, you gotta move," came Hardison's voice over the comm. "Next guard shift comes through in twenty seconds."

                "Twenty seconds?" Parker barked a quick, delighted laugh. "That's like forever!" She removed her thumb from the scanner and peeled off the film to which Stanley Singer's perfectly-preserved fingerprint had been transferred from a champagne flute.

                "Not when you're--oh! Oui, monsieur." Hardison suddenly shifted into his best French accent. Singer must have returned from the open bar. "I can assure you zat my employer will be here momentarily."

                "No you can't," said Eliot. "I need another minute. Stall him."

                 "You ain't got another minute, man," murmured Hardison under his breath. "Guy's about to walk on out. Get your butt up here."

                "I'm a little _busy_ , Hardison!"

                "What the hell you doing that's taking so long, huh?"

                Eliot didn't say anything, but the familiar sound of his fist connecting with someone's face made the answer clear. That wasn't good. Eliot wasn't supposed to be beating people up for at least ten more minutes.

                Parker pulled the door of the vault open and slipped inside, sprinting to the far wall, a mosaic of foot-square locked doors. She withdrew the master key they'd copied yesterday from the band of her hat and began opening each door as quickly as possible. They hadn't been able to get a straight answer on which compartment contained their objective, so, worst-case-scenario, she'd have to open them all.

                It was a worst-case-scenario type of day, apparently.

                "Eliot…" Hardison's tone was uneasy. "Seriously. I need you up here now. He's giving me a look."

                "A look? What kind of look?"

                "You know. A look. With his…you know, his eyes and--Eliot, for real, could you just--just get up here, man!"

                "I can't, Hardison!" More sounds of scuffling and Eliot choking someone out. "There's guys at the back entrance we didn't know about." He grunted, probably taking a hit, but from the groans that followed, Eliot paid it back with interest. Finally, he said, "Okay. On my way."

                Hardison audibly sighed in relief.

                Parker's own relief at opening the final door on the wall, however, abruptly dissipated. "Uhhhh, guys?"

                "What?" they asked in unison.

                "It's not here." She paused. "I repeat, the circuit board is not here."

                "Heard you the first time," growled Eliot. "Hardison? What's the play?"

                "What's the play? We're already on plan H!"

                "Well, it's not here," said Parker. "So I'm getting ou--" She turned to go, but froze. The guards on their round had caught up--three of them, guns drawn, blocking the exit. "Well," she said, forcing a smile as she considered her options. "That was a fast twenty seconds."

                Hardison sputtered. "Wha--Parker? Parker?"

                "The guard shift," said Eliot, swearing a little under his breath. "All right. I'm going to get her. Hardison, get out of there and get to the rendezvous. We're blown."

                "No--guys--we can't just--"

                "Hardison! It's over."

                "I'm sorry, Alec," said Parker quietly. "We can't do it."

                The comms were silent for a moment.

                "All right," said Hardison. He took in a heavy breath. "All right. I'm calling it. Eliot…get her out of there safe."

                "Always do."

                Hardison's end of the comm devolved into a flurry of apologies and excuses to the mark. Hopefully he would manage to get away okay. Right now, Parker had her own company to deal with.

                "Hi," she said cheerily. "You guys must be security! And I bet you'd like an explanation for this, right? Well, I've got one. Yup. Sure do…" She held up her hands and shrugged, muttering out the side of her mouth, "Eliot?"

                "Almost there. Just keep their attention."

                She coughed. "What am I supposed to do?"

                "Make something up, Parker! This ain't your first rodeo."

                "Ooh. Good idea!" She flashed another smile at the guards and mimed tipping an imaginary cowboy hat. "Sorry to disturb you cattlerustlers. Had a bull out of his pen. You know how it is." She tried to muster up some spit for a loogie, but didn't turn out well, so she went back to talking. "Anyway, I'm with the, you know, the ranchers association."

                They all blinked for a second.

                "Wait, what?" said the guard in the middle.

                The one on the left shrugged.

                "Ma'am," said the one on the right. "We're going to have to ask you to come with us."

                "But…but…but the cows!" exclaimed Parker. "We have to find the cows!"

                The guards all looked at each other.

                "I think she might be mentally unbalanced," said the one in the middle.

                "You're not far off," said Eliot from behind them.

                The guards turned in unison, but before they could raise their guns again, Eliot had knocked them out cold, two of them with his fists and one with the point of his elbow.

                "Owwie," said Parker with a little shrug and an impish smirk.

                Eliot narrowed his eyes at her as she crossed the room. "The ranchers association? Are you kidding me? How many times I gotta tell you--"

                "You can't fake country?"

                Eliot stuttered in his obvious irritation. "Y-yes!"

                "I know." Parker gave a quick little shrug. "I just wanted to confuse them. Worked, right?"

                He rolled his eyes and grabbed her hand to pull her down the hallway. "Whatever. C'mon. We've gotta go."

                Hardison was waiting with Lucille 4.0 at the back entrance and frantically motioned to them as they exited the building. "Come on!" No sooner had they jumped in than he peeled away from the curb, Lucille's tires smoking.

                For the first few blocks, Parker peered through the back window. "Doesn't look like we have a tail."

                "Good," muttered Eliot. He leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. "At least something went right today."

                "Excuse me?" said Hardison. "We were four-fifths of the way through that con! A lot of things went right--"

                Eliot glared at the back of Hardison's headrest. "Yeah, but it don't mean anything if you can't close the damn case!"

                "Well maybe I would have closed it if you hadn't taken your sweet time with those back entrance guards!"

                "Hey!" Eliot jabbed his finger threateningly at the air. "You didn't say anything about guys back there. There were five of them, by the way. So you're welcome."

                 "For what? For blowing our cover?"

                "STOP IT!" yelled Parker. They did, and looked at her. "Just…stop. We don't have to fight." She hugged herself and sighed. When they'd stopped the bio-bomb plot in DC, their teamwork had been so good that no one ever doubted that the three of them could keep Leverage Consulting & Associates going on their own, even down a mastermind and grifter. But the past few months hadn't really borne out those expectations. The truth was… "I miss Nate and Sophie."

               

* * *

                Back at headquarters--still located above the Portland Bridgeport Brew Pub, despite Hardison's continued insistence that the new and improved "Leverage International" would relocate to the safety of a major European city any day now--Parker and Hardison went straight upstairs, but Eliot flipped the sign in the restaurant's door to "Closed" and poured himself a pint of their house India pale ale behind the bar. He nursed it as he tried very hard not punch a hole in the wall.

                Today had been a disaster. Frankly, the last three months had been one ongoing disaster. This was the first time they hadn't managed to limp through a job to completion, but nothing about their current efforts to keep Leverage afloat was remotely up to the standards of the five-man-band days. For one thing, they were taking on fewer clients, but somehow still doing a worse job. Their cons were getting sloppy, more smash-and-grab than elegant. The rich and powerful abusers of power that Leverage was known for taking down weren't getting punished in perpetuity; mostly they were just getting robbed.

                A huge part of the problem was that now there were only three of them. Three, compared to five, was a lot harder to spread over the variety of roles needed to pull off the cons that could take down whole corporations. Just like today, Eliot couldn't simultaneously be beating up guys downstairs and playing a part for the mark upstairs. When they'd first gotten their hands on the Black Book, they'd assumed that teams around the globe would want to use it to get the people who'd "broken the world," as Nate had put it. But they hadn't counted on most criminals still acting like…well…criminals. Fat cats were being targeted, but not for any altruistic reason, and none of what was taken from them was given back to the little guy if Parker, Hardison, and Eliot weren't behind it. So they'd stopped giving away the Black Book's contents, and they weren't getting any more extra help. At one point, Hardison had joked about holding "auditions" to solve their numbers problem. But, unfortunately, bad-guys-gone-good-guys were in short supply, and Tara Cole didn't come cheap.

                Which brought them to the issue that none of them was a bonafide grifter. Not that they couldn't play roles or play them well--they could--but Eliot's first instinct was still to hit, Hardison's to hack, and Parker's to steal. Without a grifter around, it was harder for the rest of them to justify the grifting, which was ultimately the glue that really held their diverse skills sets together, the one thing they all had in common. So instead of working together like a well-oiled machine, Eliot saw them drifting back to the way they'd been when they'd first met: a group of people who worked alone.

                Maybe worst of all, Eliot found himself chafing under Hardison's leadership. Before walking away, Nate had actually tapped Parker to take on his "mastermind" role for the team--and she did have a talent for piecing together the parts of a con--but when they'd begun their war as a trio, it had quickly become apparent that what Parker wasn't as talented at was _leading_. She liked the big picture, but she wasn't good at explaining it or directing it tactically. That was where Hardison's ability to communicate had become important. Unfortunately, even the shift to Hardison on point hadn't fixed their problems.

                When Nate had been the obvious captain, and Sophie his second in command, the team's next move had always been clear. If Nate said they were going to do something, they did it, even if they didn't agree with it. Eliot had personally disagreed with Nate's decisions more often than might have been good for the rest of the team to know, but Nate had been the coach, and they, as players, had to trust him to call the plays. Nate had also demanded respect, expected it, and everything he did  made that clear. Hardison, while a natural leader and supposedly chomping at the bit to run his own crew, couldn't seem to decide whether he wanted to be in charge of _this_ crew or not. He wasn't confident and consistent; instead, he was constantly second-guessing his decisions. At the same time, he put enormous pressure on himself to perform and bristled whenever Eliot said or did something that could be interpreted as "critical." There was a look in Hardison's eye every time they took on a new client--the "What would Nate do?" look. Eliot saw it slowly driving him crazy. And that was driving Eliot crazy.

                He ran a hand through his hair and blew out a deep breath.  He hated that he was beginning to resent some of the only friends he had. How could things have gotten so outrageously awful in such a short amount of time?

                All because Nate and Sophie were gone.

                He downed the last of the beer and rinsed out the glass. It wasn't fair to blame Nate and Sophie for leaving. They'd done enough good in the world for fifty lifetimes, helped hundreds of people who couldn't help themselves. They deserved happiness, a life together that wasn't built around swindling people out of their money and possessions and reputations, even if those people were the scum of the earth.

                All the same, Eliot would have done anything to get them back. Not just for the sake of the cons, but for the sake of the team. Because, at this rate, they weren't going to be a team much longer.

                Of course, sitting around drinking wasn't accomplishing anything. But it was nice to have a moment alone, just him and the pub. Eliot had found he did some of his best thinking here. It was too bad they'd almost certainly have to leave it behind, now that this job had been left open-ended. It was one thing to show themselves during a con when the mark was discredited or arrested, rendering any testimony against them harmless. But they hadn't dealt the death blow. At any time their faces could be all over Portland.

                "Dammit," he muttered, and put the glass back under the bar.

                He took the stairs two at a time. Hardison and Parker had apparently already had the same thought as him. They were trotting around with duffel bags, stuffing all manner of things into them. Parker had one bag completely full of Euros. And was that another crammed just with Jolly Ranchers?

                Hardison put three external hard drives into a briefcase as he finished typing something into his laptop with the other hand. He looked up as Eliot walked in.

                "Hey, man. Look, about earlier--"

                "Forget about it. Let's focus on getting out of here."

                Hardison smiled sadly, lips pressed together. "I've got us all booked on different flights. You know, typical escape plan. You want Tokyo, Sydney, or--"

                "Why are we splitting up?" interrupted Parker. She set down the bags she was carrying and walked over, arms crossed. "Why do we always split up?"

                "Because it keeps us safe," said Hardison. "We're harder to track down when there's just--"

                "I don't think that's true," said Parker. Her brow furrowed. "I think we're safer together. We can't look out for each other if we split up."

                "Parker…" Eliot began.

                "No!"  Parker's eyes flashed. "No, I'm not going to do it. We can't fall apart. We can't. You promised. You promised Nate and Sophie--"

                "That was _then_ , Parker!" said Eliot.

                Hardison was looking down at his hands. "We didn't know it would turn out like this."

                Eliot tried to take a little of the edge out of his voice. "Parker, it's not working with just the three of us. We can't pull off the same kinds of jobs. Maybe it's time we went back to what we're good at. What we know."

                Parker was frowning, surprisingly emotional. "Well maybe you think you can go back, but I can't." She shook her head vigorously. "I don't want to give up. I won't."

                Maybe the tough love approach was going to be the only one that got through to her. Eliot didn't like the thought of deliberately hurting Parker's feelings, particularly when he himself wasn't keen on the notion of giving up and parting ways any more than she was, but it was the only thing that made sense. The way things had been going, they needed to cut their losses before they got arrested…or worse.

                It was his job to protect them.

                "Listen, Parker," he said, gruff and all hitter now, not friend. "We're splitting up and you're going to--"

                "Uh, guys?" interrupted Hardison.

                Eliot cut off and looked at their hacker, who was pointing at the surveillance monitors for the brew pub.

                "I agree that we should continue this conversation and all that," Hardison said. "But we've got company."


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you SO much to everyone who read Chapter 1! You guys are super awesome, and I feel so welcomed to the Leverage fic community (special shout-out to valawenel for being my encouraging sensei on this journey). So, the plan is to update every Friday (chapters will usually go up on FanFiction.net first), hopefully with some bonuses in-between when the fancy strikes. Thanks for reading!

                Initially, Hardison had thought the woman on the screen was just going to be the first of many Portland PD officers or FBI agents, and so he instinctively grabbed his briefcase and stowed his laptop in a backpack in anticipation of the raid to come.

                "Looks like she came in the front of the pub." He split the feed on the screen, keeping one half of it trained on their unauthorized visitor and scrolling the outside security camera feeds on the other. "Fire escape's clear, but, Parker, you got harnesses just in case?"

                "Does an otter mercilessly bang its food on rocks?"

                "…I'll take that as a yes."

                "I'll cover the door and come last," said Eliot. "Hardison, let's move."

                "Right." He grabbed his bags and stood up, but then stopped, watching the screen. Something weird was going on. "Wait, wait. No one else is coming in. And look at her--she isn't snooping around. No gun drawn..."

                Eliot took a step closer, peering at the monitor. "You're right. She isn't Portland Police…doesn't move like FBI…"

                Hardison almost asked, _"Are you sure?"_ but then thought better of it. FBI agents probably had very distinctive walking patterns or something.

                "Maybe she's here for a sandwich," said Parker.

                Eliot shook his head. "Sign says closed. No normal person would ignore that, especially with all the gourmet options down the street."

                "Was the front door locked?" Parker asked.

                "I thought Eliot locked it," said Hardison, thumbing over his shoulder.

                "Dammit, Hardison!" growled Eliot. "Why don't you take some damn responsibility around--"

                "Hey!" said Parker, pointing. "She's sitting down. It…it looks like she's waiting for somebody."

                That was exactly how it looked. In fact…

                "Wait a second," Eliot said. "That's the client table." He shot Hardison a dark look. "You scheduled an appointment with a _client_ today?"

                Hardison hoped his expression conveyed incredulity. "What? I assumed we'd be done with that last con by now! Besides, she sounded pretty desperate in her email."

                "Yeah, well, you know what they say about assuming, Hardison."

                "It makes an ass out of Eliot?"

                A deep, scary, jaguar-gonna-eat-your-babies noise came from Eliot's throat, but Parker, who seemed to live for diffusing tense moments between the two guys, cheerfully said, "I'll go meet with her."

                "No!" said Eliot and Hardison together.

                "We still need to get out of here," said Hardison at the same time Eliot said, "We're not taking any more clients!"

                "Hey," said Parker with a pointed look. "She needs our help. Can't we at least hear her out?"

                "Absolutely not," Eliot said. "We need to skip Portland, and every second we stay here, our window to do that closes."

                Parker turned to Hardison, her eyes soft and open. When they'd first met, she hadn't even been capable of an expression like that. He loved to see how far she'd come, to see in her face that she cared about him, about the team…about anyone in need.

                He smiled at her. He couldn't help it.

                Eliot apparently noticed this expression exchange. "Hardison," he warned. "Don't you dare…"

                "All right," Hardison agreed, reaching for Parker's hand. It was small and warm in his own. "Let's hear the lady out."

                "Absolutely ridiculous," muttered Eliot.

                Parker, however, was beaming. "Thank you."

                "Oh, you can thank me later," said Hardison with a wink.

                She laughed and hit his shoulder lightly with the back of her hand. "I just did, silly!"

                Right. Still a long way to go with Parker and subtext.

                When they got downstairs, the woman was still sitting at the table, her back to them. She turned, though, as their footsteps echoed through the empty pub.

                She stood up. She was tall, maybe close to five-ten or five-eleven, and slim. Despite the dimness--all the lights were off, but late afternoon sun was peeking in through the slats of the window blinds--Hardison could still see that she was pretty, with even olive skin and dark hair that was pulled back in a ponytail. But, she wasn't wearing any makeup, and she had on a boxy, untailored pantsuit that wasn't particularly flattering. Her hands fidgeted in obvious anxiety.

                "Oh, I'm so glad you're here," she said. "I thought maybe I had mixed up my appointment time."

                "Nope," said Parker before Eliot or Hardison could manage a response. "You're right on time!" She slid into a chair across from the woman, and folded her hands expectantly on the table, visibly over-eager.

                The woman sat back down, too. Hardison slid in beside Parker, but Eliot remained standing, arms crossed and eyes darting between the front door and the kitchen.

                "So, Miss…?" Hardison prompted.

                "Oh, right! I'm sorry," said the woman. She reached up to fiddle with a thin silver necklace at her collarbone. "It's Charlotte. Charlotte Dahl."

                "And what's your situation, Miss Dahl?" asked Hardison.

                "I…well…"

                "You don't have to be shy," said Parker matter-of-factly. "I haven't stabbed anybody lately."

                Understandably, Charlotte Dahl looked slightly alarmed at this revelation. "Um…"

                "Uh, could you just…give us one second, 'kay?" Hardison held up a finger and then hid his mouth behind his hand. "Hey, babe," he whispered. "Why don't you, you know, let me talk to her?"

                "But I want to help her!"

                "Yeah, yeah, I know that, so why don't you let me, you know, let me do the talking, and we can…talk to her…know what I'm sayin'?"

                Parker scrunched up her lips. "But all you did was repeat what you just said--"

                "Miss Dahl," said Hardison, over Parker. "Why don't you just start at the beginning."

                 She took a deep breath. "I work for a small non-profit that does aid and relief work around the world. Last month, I got reassigned from a project in Uzbekistan to Paris."

                "That's a big change of scenery," said Eliot.

                "I know, tell me about it," said Charlotte. "I was moved to work with refugees from the Libyan civil war. My company needed someone with good Arabic to go into the tent cities to facilitate communication between our aid workers and the refugees, particularly with women and children, who sometimes won't speak readily to outsiders."

                "So you speak Maghrebi Arabic and French," said Eliot. "And Uzbek? That's an unusual skill set."

                "I've learned a lot of languages for work," said Charlotte. "And after the second one, they get a lot easier. But I really don't know that much Uzbek--I wasn't there very long. Arabic, on the other hand, I've studied since I was an undergraduate. I know a few dialects."

                "So you went to Paris?" asked Hardison, giving a look to Eliot that said, _"Stop interrupting."_

                "Yes. And at first, nothing seemed out of the ordinary--I mean, for a refugee camp. But then I started seeing these men around the camp who I knew weren't refugees, and I would see them come and go in groups, about every other day. I began to ask around about who they were, but everyone pretended that they didn't know what I was talking about. They were obviously scared of something. So…one day, when the men showed up…I followed them."

                "That was a big risk," said Parker.

                "I know I'm just one person, but those refugees have been through enough. If these men were preying on them somehow…I wanted to try to stop it if I could. I wasn't going to take things into my own hands, or anything, but I also didn't want to go to the authorities without some kind of evidence."

                "So, what happened?" asked Hardison.

                Charlotte began playing with her necklace again. "I followed the men to a tent and hid behind another when they went inside. I overheard them…" She closed her eyes and rubbed them, then took in another deep breath. "The men inside were discussing…payment. They wanted their money for something. At first, I thought they were talking to each other, but then…then someone started speaking in perfect American English, with someone translating for him. He thanked the men for their services, but wanted assurance that…that the _attacks_ would go as planned."

                Hardison saw Eliot visibly tense. "Did you get eyes on the guy?" asked the hitter.

                "Yes," said Charlotte. "I caught a glimpse of him as he left the tent. I'd seen him around before. His name is Carson McMaster." She paused, then carried on, an edge to her voice. "He's an attaché from the American embassy."

                They were all silent for a moment as this sunk in.

                Hardison cleared his throat. "Did you tell anyone about this?"

                "I didn't know who to tell, and I didn't have any real proof. I mean, what if I had misunderstood? Eventually I did go to my supervisor, but he said I was just being paranoid. Even I started to think so."

                "Well there hasn't been any recent terrorist activity in Paris," said Eliot. "Maybe you didn't hear what you thought you did."

                "I thought so, too. I honestly did."

                Parker frowned. "But something changed your mind."

                Charlotte Dahl leaned forward, as if she was afraid of being overheard by invisible ears in the brew pub. "A few days later, I was late leaving work. I had gotten tied up helping a few of the women in the camp, so I didn't get home until an hour later than I usually do. When I got back to my apartment building, smoke was pouring out the windows. There had been an ignited gas leak--on my floor, no survivors. If I had been home at my normal time, I would have died." Her eyes were big, anxious. "Please. I was told you help people. I'm sure now that there are going to be terror attacks in Paris soon. And I think someone's trying to kill me because I know who's behind them."

                "So…what you want us to do," said Parker, "is fly to Paris, stop the attacks, and prove that a dirty embassy official is behind them?"

                "I…" Charlotte looked terrified. "Well…yes."

                Parker suddenly began laughing in what was probably an inappropriate way, considering the circumstances, and gave Charlotte two thumbs up.

                "Of course we will!"

               

* * *

                Eliot tried to keep his voice even. Charlotte Dahl didn't need any more shaking up. "Parker…can we talk to you privately?"

                Parker made a face but stood up, and Hardison followed suit, asking Dahl to give them a minute. Eliot led the way into the kitchen and stood leaning against one of the long metal counters with his arms crossed.

                He eyed Hardison, silently asking, _"Do you want to take this, or should I?"_

                Hardison, evidently opting for the good-cop opening, said, "Parker, we can't take this."

                She shook her head. "We have to."

                "Babe, it's like we were saying upstairs--"

                "We can't just let her get killed!"

                Hardison put his hands up, as if to ward off an attack. "That's not what we're going to do. Look, I can insert a tip into the servers for Interpol, the CIA, MI5, you name it. They can handle the attacks. And I can put Charlotte in my own special brand of Witness Protection. Better than the US government. New name, new social, new life, new Facebook page. She'll be okay."

                "But what if she's got a life of her own, huh? What if she doesn't want to leave?"

                "Collateral damage," said Eliot. "But it's better than being dead."

                Parker crossed her arms and mirrored Eliot's stance. Her refusal to walk away from jobs was one of the qualities she did share with Nate, though that wasn’t necessarily a good thing. Sometimes her stubbornness could make mules look cooperative. "No one's going to believe that an embassy official is behind it without proof. Maybe they'll stop these attacks, but is McMaster just going to get away?" She looked from Eliot to Hardison, then back at Eliot. "That's not how we do things."

                "Parker, were you not _listening_ earlier?" Eliot felt the irritation and frustration of these past weeks bubbling to the surface. His jaw ached from the tension he had been carrying in it. "We don't do anything anymore. We're done. It's over. We failed."

                "No. We can do this. We stopped the attack in DC and we can stop another--"

                "Parker, _grow up!_ " Eliot heard himself say. It was out before he could check it, gruff and scathing. The muscles in Parker's face tensed, her eyes becoming glassy.

                Hardison blinked in obvious disbelief for a second, then recovered and shot Eliot a withering glare. He stepped between the thief and the hitter, put his hands on Parker's shoulders, and murmured something that Eliot couldn't hear. Whatever it was, she nodded slowly in response to it and wiped her eyes with the back of a hand.

                He hadn't meant to lash out at her, to cut her on a personal level. Guilt and shame threatened to rise up from his gut and spread like the heat from a scalding beverage through his chest, but he had extensive experience ignoring and displacing those particular emotions. Instead of letting them touch him, he made short work of them with logic and a robust sense of self-preservation.

                Parker was too close to this job, to every job now. She, more than Eliot or even Hardison, had built her identity around what they did. How many times had Nate and Sophie and Hardison told her that she wasn't alone, that she wasn't just a thief anymore? How many times had they said that to Eliot? The difference was, Parker had finally bought into it and opened herself up, tied herself to the cause. She had changed. No longer was she a solo cat-burglar without direction, searching for belonging by amassing piles of shiny objects. Now she had come to see herself the way clients did: as a hero, as a white knight…as a good guy. Eliot was beginning to realize how tantalizingly close he had come to making that same mistake.

                But he had never fully forgotten the truth--that there was no atoning for the things that he had done. There was no crusade righteous enough to take back the darkness he had walked in, no water holy enough for his stains. There was no sterilization of his skill set. No matter who he did it for, his job was still to inflict pain.

                Of course he had come to care about these people, but he honestly should have known better. One day it was going to have to end. He should have walked away when Nate and Sophie had. Walked away, retired, retreated, gone to live in a cabin without electricity or running water, next to a pond stocked with trout.

                Too late. He had been able to protect the team from everything...except the end.

                Hardison was embracing Parker now, protectively stroking her hair as she buried her face in his neck. "Parker…come on," he whispered. "Let's get out of here."


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again to everyone who read Chapters 1 and 2! Your subscriptions, kudos and reviews are so encouraging. I apologize in advance because this chapter is slightly shorter than the last two, but the next two updates are going to be much bigger, and this is the break that made sense before them. Anyway, hope you like it!

                Parker insisted upon being the one to break the news to Charlotte Dahl. Dahl, for all her desperation, appeared to take it fairly well. Maybe Hardison's solution of tipping off intelligence agencies and getting her a new life seemed like enough to her. Whatever the reason for her calmness, she thanked them profusely for what they had explained they could do, and she left without requiring further convincing.

                Fifteen minutes later, they had loaded the last of their bags - stuff of Hardison's, Parker's sacks of candy and cash…and that damn portrait of old Nate - into Lucille. Everything Eliot owned that was worth moving was kept in a storage unit these days, what with the LA office blowing up and leaving Boston for good without warning.  Even his apartment had to be ready to burn at a moment's notice. Anyway, he didn't travel with luggage.

                It was a testament to the depth and complexity of the aliases constructed by Hardison for the failed con that neither the Portland PD nor the FBI had yet shown up at the brew pub. But their luck couldn't hold for long. Eliot was relieved to finally be clearing the premises, no matter his attachment to the menu he had so lovingly constructed for it.

                He slid behind the wheel of the van, and Parker and Hardison climbed in the back. Parker hadn't said a thing to him since the scene in the kitchen, and what Hardison did say was all business. Eliot knew that he had broken an unspoken code with his outburst. But how he could un-break it would have to be something for worrying about later. At least it had gotten them out in time.

                His lips pressed into a grim line as he put his foot to the gas pedal and began to pull out. At that moment, though, something streaked in front of the van, and he had to jam the brakes instead to keep from running it over.

                It was Charlotte Dahl.

                "Wait!" she cried, and put both her hands on Lucille's hood. "Please don't leave me here alone!"

                "How the hell did she know we were back here?" barked Eliot. He motioned at the woman to get out of the way, but she vigorously shook her head no.

                Hardison coughed. "Parker…"

                "You said you could get her a new identity," said Parker, her voice light, as if the past two hours hadn't happened. "Well we have to keep her safe until then. That's the least Eliot can do," she added.

                Eliot gripped the steering wheel until his knuckles turned white. "I don't want to do this again, Parker."

                She didn't respond. Instead, the door audibly opened, and then Parker came walking around the side of the van. She smiled widely at Dahl and took her hand. Seconds later they both were climbing in, and the door slammed shut behind them.

                "Well don't just sit here being mad about it, Eliot," said Hardison, who for his part sounded vaguely amused. "Get us out of here."

                Where were all the bad guys when Eliot needed someone to beat up? Grinding his teeth, he threw Lucille into gear again and pulled away from the building, away from their final headquarters, away from their lives for the past five years.

                "Where are we going?" asked Dahl as they merged onto Interstate 5 going North.

                "Washington," said Hardison. "We've got some contacts in Seattle. I'll take care of papers for us all there, and I guess we'll get you set up with a plane ticket to your new life."

                Dahl sighed. "A new life…sounds…"

                "Sorry," said Hardison. "There's just no other viable option."

                "What? Oh, no, I think you've got the wrong idea," said Dahl. "A new life actually sounds…sort of great. I'm a little worn out by the expectations of my job. It's been hard, getting moved around all the time, never knowing where they'd want me next. I wanted to make a difference, but I joined my company right out of college, and it's been…well, honestly it's been pretty lonely."

                "Why don't you just quit?" Parker asked. She bit down on something that sounded like a handful of dry cereal and started noisily chewing. "Fant sfom?" She shook the box, probably in Dahl's face.

                "Um…no thanks."

                "Hey, throw me my gummy frogs," said Hardison.

                "Ooh, actually, I'll have one of those," said Dahl.

                Eliot rolled his eyes. Good to know they were all set on snacks.

                "But, seriously," said Hardison after a second, talking around a gummy frog. "Why  _didn't_  you just quit?"

                Dahl's prolonged silence might have been her thinking. Alternatively, she was trying to chew an entire gummy frog all at once, and that could take awhile. In any case, she finally said, "I…was afraid of what people would think, I guess. Who would trade what I do for a desk job?" Despite her words, she didn't sound completely convinced of them herself.

                "A new identity's a high price to pay just to escape peer pressure," said Eliot.

                Another long pause, after which Dahl quietly said, "Yes, I guess it is." And the topic was clearly closed, despite the fact that there must have been a whole lot more to the story.

                The next forty-five minutes or so passed in silence. Every once in a while Eliot thought about turning on the radio, but he didn't want to deal with Hardison's complaints or Parker silently climbing into the front seat to change the station. They'd been trapped together in a Lucille incarnation enough times for the routine to be clear. Anyway, he wasn't really in the mood to listen to anything. The thoughts in his head were loud enough.

                It was Charlotte Dahl who broke the spell again. "So…I don't mean to pry…but someone told me that there were five people on your…team. What happened to the other two?"

                 None of them answered right away. Then, all at once, Eliot said, "No idea what you're talking about," at the same time that Hardison said, "They sort of retired," and Parker said, "Parachuting accident."

                Dahl cleared her throat. "Right. Sorry I asked. None of my business."

* * *

 

                Once they reached the outskirts of Seattle, they checked into a middle-of-the-road-nothing-special chain hotel for the night. Hardison made a fuss about having to spoof credit cards to tie to the rooms, but Parker convinced the young man working at the front desk  to waive that requirement with a handful of cash from her US Dollar bag. Just in case, she also had Euro and Yen bags in Lucille.

                Ten minutes later, they were settling into adjoining rooms, one for Hardison and Eliot and the other for Parker and Charlotte Dahl. Theoretically they could open the doors between the rooms, but Parker wasn't feeling particularly social. Today had been…weird. Worse than weird. Eliot wasn't meeting her eye, Hardison was acting like someone had kicked his puppy, and, even though Parker had been the one to insist that Charlotte come with them, having a stranger around wasn't helping the group dynamic. And Parker hadn't thought far enough ahead to realize she'd have to share a room. That was  _really_  weird.

                "Uh…excuse me?"

                Parker blinked. "Hm? What?" She glanced around. Charlotte Dahl was smiling apologetically from the door to the bathroom.

                "I'm…I'm sorry. I didn't mean to disturb you. I just asked if I could have the first shower."

                "Oh." Parker shrugged. "Sure." Yeah. Weird.

                "Thanks," said Charlotte Dahl. She shifted uncomfortably. "Um…sorry, again, but…what was your name?"

                Parker frowned. "What?"

                "Your name? I'm sorry. I know it's kind of funny, but I just realized you never introduced yourself. Of course, it's okay if you don't want to -"

                "Parker."

                Charlotte Dahl smiled and nodded. "Parker…?"

                "Hm?"

                "Oh, no, it's okay…I was just…we can do just first names. That's fine. Sorry. I didn't mean to -"

                Huh? What was this girl talking about? Parker frowned, trying to figure out if maybe Charlotte Dahl was telling some kind of bad joke. There were a lot of jokes that Hardison told that Parker didn't really get. Then again, no one seemed to understand the things that  _she_  thought were laugh-worthy.

                For instance, Charlotte Dahl was turning red. That was pretty funny. "Never mind. I'll just…take that shower now."

                Poor Charlotte Dahl. She definitely needed their help. Anyone as awkward as her wasn't going to get very far with hit-men on her tail. Parker shrugged as the door closed and flopped down on her bed, the one closest to the door, and started picking out patterns in the dapples on the ceiling.

                The room phone rang as she was tracing the outline of a hippo with her finger in front of her eye. She stretched over backwards to pick it up, holding it to her ear as she hung halfway off the mattress, upside down.

                "Elsa's Dry Cleaning, how may I direct your call?"

                "Parker."

                "Sorry, no one by that name here. I think you might have the wrong number."

                "Parker."

                "Do you want to take advantage of our two for ten dollars special? It's a real  _steal_."

                She imagined Hardison slapping his forehead with the palm of his hand. "Babe, seriously, just wanted to know what kind of pizza you girls want for dinner."

                Parker's nose wrinkled. "Again?"

                "Now don't you start, too. Our options are limited for delivery around here. I already got the Death Eater crazy-eyes lecture from Eliot. 'If it ain't got Tuscan crust, I won't eat it,' my ass."

                "Well, duh, people who eat death don't want to eat pizza, Alec."

                There was a pause. "Girl, for real? We just watched the sixth Harry Potter last week." Hardison sighed into his receiver. "You're killing me, smalls."

                "Oh,  _The Sandlot_. Good movie. What does that have to do with Harley Piper?" Haha, poor Hardison. It was so fun to mess with him sometimes. Way more fun than anything else that had happened today, for sure.

                "…tell you what. How about you open y'all's, door, 'kay, and we can all figure out our order together."

                Parker frowned. Suddenly she didn't feel so playful. "I don't really want to."

                "Parker…"

                "Just order whatever Eliot wants. Don't want him to get mad again."

                "Parker, that wasn't about you, okay? We're all at the end of our ropes after today. But we're going to figure it out. I promise."

                She felt the blood in her cheeks warm up, heavy in her head as she hung off the bed. A pressure settled in  her chest, like someone was pushing down on her sternum. It was a foreign sensation, but she was able to pinpoint it because it was the same as what she'd felt back in their Portland headquarters - their last headquarters - just this afternoon. When Eliot and Hardison had suggested - no, insisted - that they split up.

                "You didn't even book us two tickets together," she whispered into the phone. Then she hung it up and hugged herself. All of the sudden the room seemed chilly.

                Why were the guys being like this? Sure, today had been a setback, but they were acting like it was the end of the world. Come on, they were Eliot Spencer, Alec Hardison, and Parker…three people who were really good at what they did. More than that, they were the Leverage team, who stood up for the little guy. If they didn't do it, who would?

                Even as she thought it, she remembered what she'd said in the van as they'd pulled away from their failed job:  _"I miss Nate and Sophie."_

                It was true. Nate would have come up with a plan to keep the job going. Sophie would have played Hardison's employer so Eliot could focus on beating up bad guys…things had worked better with Nate and Sophie.

                But it wasn't just the cons that were crumbling. Even Parker, emotionally-unaware as she could be, saw how the three of them who were left were drifting apart. With Nate and Sophie, they had been a family. Without them…it was always two against one. Like this afternoon.

                " _Parker, grow up!"_

                She knew Eliot hadn't wanted to hurt her feelings - even the constant banter and irritation between the three of them wasn't ever supposed to be  _serious_. But she also knew that he had meant what he said. In that moment, he had definitely meant it.

                "Hey…Parker?"

                She craned her neck forward so that her chin touched her chest. Charlotte Dahl, wrapped in a towel with her long, dark hair dripping, gave another awkward, apologetic smile. Her clothes were tucked under one arm. "Are you okay?" she asked.

                "What?" Parker sat up in a hurry and crossed her legs like a pretzel. "Oh yeah. Totally okay. Nooooo problems. None at all. Mucho bueno."

                Charlotte Dahl didn't look very convinced. "Look," she said. "I really appreciate what you were trying to do, when you told me I could come along with you guys. But, I was thinking about it in the shower, and I'm going to catch a bus tomorrow. I'll go stay with my brother in Idaho, or something. Because…uh, what's his name? The guy who was driving the van? I think someone said it but I -"

                "Eliot."

                "Right. Eliot. Um…well, I don't think he wants me around very much. And I think that makes sense, since you all are obviously a team, and I'm just your client, and…"

                Something stirred in Parker's stomach.  _You all are obviously a team_.

                "No," said Parker, interrupting Charlotte Dahl.

                "No…what?"

                Parker clenched her fists. Eliot and Hardison might think that they were done. Eliot and Hardison might think they needed to split up. Eliot and Hardison might not like having Charlotte Dahl around. But, even if she had to share a room with their client - as totally weird as that was - she was going to show them that they were wrong. That they could do this, and any, job.

                Parker felt a small smile creep over her lips. Her mind whirled, already moving a thousand miles a minute. Yes. That could work. It would need to be timed right, but she could do it. Oh, they would be mad. Furious. Eliot would probably snap her in two. But they'd thank her, eventually, when they realized she'd kept them together. That was what mattered.

                "No," she said. "I think you should definitely stick with me." She met Charlotte Dahl's gaze and held it ferociously. "Because I'm going to need your help to save Paris."


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Valentines Day from the City of Love...

"And that's… forty for you… keep the change." Hardison flashed a winning smile for the pizza guy and took the boxes containing dinner for the team, plus one. "Cheers, man."

"Don't be too friendly," grumbled Eliot from his bed, where he was watching - well, pretending to watch, probably - a football game. "All it takes is someone's twenty-buck tip for that guy to remember what room the nice black guy was in."

"You're just in a bad mood. Have been all day. Getting me in a bad mood."

Eliot's glare was at once scathing and cold as Boston winter. "You know I'm right. About all of it."

Hardison sighed. He set the boxes down on the dresser beside the TV and collapsed into the chair tucked in the corner near the window. A headache that had begun the moment the job had gone wrong was now a throbbing migraine. He'd tried to chalk it up to low blood sugar, but all the gummy frogs and orange soda in Lucille - or even the newly-arrived pizza - couldn't cure what he knew had way more to do with the dread in the pit of his stomach than anything else.

"Look," he said. "I know what you're saying, man, and I don't disagree. I just… it doesn't feel right. Stopping. Maybe Parker has a point."

Eliot wasn't even pretending to watch the game now. He just stared at Hardison, eyes narrowed. "We've got a list of reasons a mile long why we can't go back to Portland, much less prancing around Europe for a new client. Stanley Singer and his security team saw our faces during that job, and there's probably an APB out on us up and down the coast. We need to lay low. You were right to suggest we get out of the country separately. At least until things cool off."

"Yeah, but that's what worries me," said Hardison. "Because when I hear you say 'until things cool off,' what I'm pretty sure you mean is, 'for good.' Because I see it in your eyes, man. You think we're done.  _Done,_ done."

Eliot turned his dark look to the bedspread. A curtain of hair fell over his eyes as he murmured, "We were done months ago. The moment Nate and Sophie left."

The words stung, and Hardison couldn't stop himself from physically flinching away from them. "Now hold on just a damn minute - "

"You know it's true. You know the last few months have handed our ass to us. We're not a crew, Hardison. Three people ain't a crew."

"Fine. I'll give you that. The three of us haven't been enough. Not for the kind of stuff we want to do. But we can still - "

"Still  _what_? Steal stuff? Hack stuff? Hit stuff? Yeah. We can. On our own. Or the two of you can scamper off together, whatever. But  _this -_ " He made a tight little circle with his index finger in the air. " - this is over. I said it earlier, and I stand by it. We cut it close today. Next time, we might not all get out in one piece. So I'm calling it. We're done. We had a good run, but I'm not going to let you two get yourselves killed, thinking you can do everything we used to be able to. When you get your arms amputated you don't insist you can still play baseball."

"Really? That's the metaphor you're going with?"

Eliot wasn't amused. "This is it, Hardison." The hitter's face softened, just slightly, though he still looked like he might break something in half at any second. "I'm sorry. Tomorrow morning, I'm out."

There were a million things Hardison wanted to say, but none of them could factually counter what Eliot was laying down. Then again, hadn't it always been that way between them, to a certain extent?

"You know what this reminds me of, Eliot?"

"…what?"

"Spock, McCoy, and Kirk. Head, Heart, Gut."

"Are you seriously bringing up Star Wars right now?"

" _Trek_. Star  _Trek_ , Eliot. For the bazillionth - no, you know what? Hear me out. Spock's the head. That's you. Facts. This is the situation, this is how it is. McCoy's the heart. That's Parker. She doesn't care about the facts if it goes against what she feels is right. And Kirk… he's the gut. He goes on instinct."

Eliot raised his eyebrows in obvious skepticism. "And that's you?"

Hardison couldn't help being mildly offended at that. He crossed his arms. "Yeah, that's me. And my instinct is that we can't just be done. Maybe we take a break, like after the First David Job or post-San Lorenzo. But not for good. Not knowing what it will do to Parker."

 _What it will do to me,_  he thought.  _Even what it would do to you, Eliot, no matter how tough you think you are._

Eliot sighed, but his face became an unreadable mask. Big surprise. "Well, something's gotta give, then." He shook his head and stood up, pointing at the pizza boxes. "But right now, I'm freakin' hungry. I'll even eat that."

Well, that was progress. A whole lot of pessimistic progress, but movement on the issue, nonetheless. Hardison took that as his cue to get the girls.

* * *

Soon they were all spread out around the boys' hotel room, greasy pizza slices nearly sliding off of cheap paper plates in their laps. Parker perched next to Hardison on the bed, though she hadn't directly spoken to him since she'd hung up on their phone call earlier. Eliot sat on the floor, back against the wall, and Charlotte was looking very awkward in the chair in the corner.

Hardison glanced sideways at his girlfriend, but she didn't look back at him. She was instead doing a very good job of appearing preoccupied with picking an olive off the top of her half-eaten slice.

 _"You didn't even book us two tickets together,"_ echoed her voice in his head, making up for her in-person silence.

He wanted to shut his head in the door, or at least slap himself. No wonder she didn't want to talk to him. Even Eliot had pointed out that Hardison and Parker would 'scamper off together,' but Hardison had automatically booked three separate tickets for their getaway. Only now was he putting together how that must have looked to the girl who only trusted four people in the world… two of whom had left her and two more who were suggesting that they up and do the same.

"Parker… can I talk to you for a second?"

Her lips twisted to one side, but she didn't look at him, still apparently fascinated by the olive, which she then abruptly popped in her mouth.

"Whatcha want to talk about, huh?" she asked her plate.

"It's… you know, I didn't - look, Parker, can we - " He glanced up at the other two. Charlotte was obviously trying very hard to seem interested in something else. Eliot had his eyes closed, but that didn't mean jack. "Can we go to your room for a sec?"

Parker plopped her plate down on the bedspread and stood up, moving stiffly to the door adjoining the hotel rooms and slipping through it without a word.

Sighing and stepping over Eliot's outstretched legs, Hardison followed, closing the door softly behind them. Parker's overnight bag was tipped over on her bed, and next to it wads of non-sequential, unmarked bills were mixed in a little pile with a couple of rigs and some changes of clothes. She pushed half of the pile to one side and sat down in the space she'd made, surrounded by a wall made from her odd assortment of belongings. A makeshift refuge.

Hardison glanced at the other bed, which was only graced by Charlotte Dahl's plain black handbag. If she'd brought anything else with her to Portland, it had been left behind. He sat down on the edge of the mattress.

Neither one of them said anything. Parker was looking down at her hands, not once making eye contact with him. After a while she started arranging her stacks of bills into little towers. Hardison tried to find the words to begin, but he wasn't even sure what he wanted to say. Here they were, finally alone for the first time since Eliot's outburst at the brew pub, but Hardison felt his throat constricting whenever he thought of a sentence that remotely came close to what he felt like she needed to hear.

Something clicked in his mind, and he blinked. Maybe that was the problem: he had been so focused all day long on fixing the problem, on keeping Parker and Eliot on an even keel, that he hadn't once thought about what he needed to say for  _himself_ , or why that might matter.  _He_ hadn't wanted them all to fly to different places… but he'd done what he'd thought he was supposed to.

He found his voice. "Parker?"

She still didn't look up. One of her money towers was leaning precariously to one side. She nudged it with a finger to keep it from toppling over.

"Hey, mama? C'mon, look at me."

Her eyes darted up and met his, though her face was clenched in a frown.

"Next time, it's you and me to the Caribbean. First class. You and me. Together."

Her features relaxed, but she didn't blink, as if she had suddenly decided they were going to have a staring contest. "What about Eliot?"

He blew out a deep breath and shook his head, forfeiting his chance to out-stare her - not that there was a snowball's chance in Hell of that, to begin with. "Honestly? I don't know. I was talking to him earlier, and he's… well, he's set on what he thinks will keep us safe. You know him. All he cares about is keeping us alive."

"Yeah, well, maybe he should care a little bit more about keeping us friends," she muttered and knocked the money tower over with a flick of her pinky.

"I know, babe... I know."

"I just…" began Parker after a pause, "…it's not fair. It's one job. One mistake."

He stood up and brushed aside a mound of clothes tangled up with one of her jump-off-a-tall-building harnesses, sitting down beside her and slipping an arm around her waist. After a second, she leaned into him and rested her head on his shoulder. He kissed her hair.

"We'll figure something out," he said.  _Please, let that be true._

He almost missed Parker's whisper against his shirt. "I don't want Eliot to change back. I'm scared he'll change back."

Hardison's heart clenched as she voiced one of his own lurking fears. In the long run, they would probably be okay. But Eliot? Eliot didn't have a Sophie or a Parker to anchor him. If Eliot stepped out without them, he stepped out alone. And the person he'd been when he was alone… honestly, Hardison was a little frightened by that guy. "We won't let that happen."

"I know," said Parker.

He was so focused on reassuring her that it wasn't until later that he considered the odd change in her tone of voice then, that tightening of her words as she added, "We'll do what we have to."

* * *

Parker and Hardison's footfalls moved into the girls' room. Probably to talk about Eliot. At least about how to convince him to not walk away come daybreak. They just didn't get it. Any move he made was for them. To keep them safe. Why couldn't they trust his damn judgment without question every once in a while? Or even just once - that'd be something.

But, no. Whenever their lives might hang in the balance, no one but Parker and Hardison could be so stubborn and obtuse.

"Are they... you know, together?"

Eliot opened one eye. Dahl was looking at him, nibbling on the edge of her crust.

Man, this girl asked a lot of questions. Too many questions for Eliot's taste. Typical civilian, unable to just sit still and be quiet and let the experts do their job.

"Yes." He closed his eye again, hoping that was a clear enough signal for her. He'd already sucked down his pizza - greasy, tasteless, rubbery, but sustenance - so he could sit like this for hours. In fact, a little bit of sleep sounded pretty good right about now.

"Yeah, I figured." Dahl laughed. "Well, that's a bummer. I thought he was kind of cute. What was his name, again?"

So much for taking the hint.

"Hardison."

"Eliot, Parker, and Hardison."

Eliot. Yes, Hardison had said his name in Lucille. Parker. Parker could have introduced herself. Or, more likely, Dahl had asked. And they'd just covered Hardison… maybe he should have been more careful, even if she was technically a client. He opened both his eyes this time, looking for a hint of recognition in her features. Nothing. Just curiosity. A whole lot of it.

He turned on what little bit of Southern Gentleman he could muster at the moment. "Look, Miss Dahl, I don't want to be rude. I'm just pretty tired, and we're sort of private people, so…"

"Oh! Oh, of course. I'm sorry. I'll just… I'm going to get some water."

Finally.

She got up, headed for the bathroom. He resumed napping position and a minute later heard her come back, sipping from one of the room's water glasses. They sat in blissful silence for a while… until the knock on the door.

Eliot was on his feet between heartbeats, but, surprisingly, so was Dahl. She was already tiptoeing toward the door.

Idiot. Damn civilians. Insistent upon putting themselves in harm's way. Was no one in the world remotely rational?

"Don't look through the - " Eliot's whisper died on his tongue.

Dahl had her back to the door and her head turned to press her ear against it. Instead of peering through the peephole, which he'd been about to warn her against - there were plenty of ways for unwanted company to use peepholes to gather information or even determine where to place a bullet - she eyed the deadbolt, which was done, and slowly crouched. Silent as a cat.

The knock came again.

"Excuse me," said a voice on the other side. "I have extra blankets for a Mister Jay?"

Hardison's check-in alias. Some reference to "men in suits" or something. Now that Eliot thought about it, Hardison had called down to the front desk for extra blankets after his unproductive pizza conversation with Parker.

He mouthed  _"Okay"_  to Dahl. She visibly relaxed. Then, as if nothing had happened, she stood up, brushed off her pants, and opened the door.

At that moment Hardison came back in, though Parker didn't follow. His expression was difficult to read, as if he didn't quite know how to react to whatever had happened during their conversation. "Oh, good, my blankets."

Dahl smiled at the hotel employee who had dropped off the blankets and closed the door, handing the folded pile to Hardison. "I get cold in hotels, too," she said. "I can't ever get the air conditioning units to turn down right!"

Hardison smiled tiredly at her and nodded, but his mind was obviously somewhere else. "Well, I'm going to turn in. Parker's already getting into her pajamas… guess she doesn't want the rest of that pizza. Anyway, I'll call my contacts tomorrow, get you your new documents… all that."

"Leave the door on your side slightly cracked," said Eliot. "Just in case anything goes down and we need to get you out quickly."

Charlotte Dahl looked a little alarmed by the suggestion, but she nodded. "Of course. Sorry, I'm just not used to… well, you understand."

_Then why didn't you look through the peephole?_

"If you need anything, or if anything happens," said Hardison, "just call or knock. Eliot doesn't really sleep that much, anyway, so he'll probably be awake. "

Dahl offered Eliot a sympathetic look that made him want to roll his eyes. "My dad used to struggle with insomnia," she said. "He eventually went and saw a hypnotist to get help with it."

Hardison made a funny sound in his throat at the mention of the hypnotist, but when Dahl turned to look at him again, the hacker just smiled. Good. The last thing they needed right now was Hardison trying to explain why he wasn't big on hypnosis, which would undoubtedly open a Pandora's Box of questions from Little Miss Curious.

"Good night," prompted Eliot.

"Oh, yes, good night," said Dahl. She nodded, smiled at Hardison - a little too long - and ducked back into the girls' room, shutting the guys' door quietly behind her.

Even though he was tired, grumpy, and annoyed, Eliot couldn't help a small smirk. "Somebody's got a crush."

"What? Nah. She's just traumatized from spending ten minutes alone with you."

They both snorted. A moment of normalcy.

"Hey," said Eliot. "Do me a favor? Run a check on her."

"On Charlotte?"

"Yeah… I've just got this… feeling."

Hardison's eyebrows crept upward. "A feeling? You mean like a gut feeling? You wanna be Kirk now?"

"I didn't say I bought into your little Star Trek classification system."

"Heyyyy." Hardison grinned and wiggled his eyebrows. "You remembered right. Trek, not Wars."

"What? No. Whatever. Just run the damn check."

The hacker grabbed his laptop bag and opened the computer. Soon the tapping of his fingers on the keyboard filled the room. "So, what do you mean, you got a feeling?"

"It's just something she did. When the blankets came."

"The hypnotist thing? I know, that's seriously messed up, man - "

"No. Before she opened the door." He replayed it in his mind, just that ten second window. "She didn't look through the peephole." The more he thought about it, went through it, the more it bugged him. How very non-civilian-like it had been.

"I know lots of people - normal people, Eliot - who don't look through the peephole when they answer the door."

Eliot shook his head, eyes traveling to Charlotte Dahl's abandoned water glass. "She moved quietly, intentionally. She put her back to the door, listened for vibrations against it, and she crouched. Like she was anticipating… like she was anticipating a possible gunshot. She didn't think about it. It was just instinct."

"Well, maybe they get training for that at her organization."

"Relief work?"

"Okay, fine, but someone did try to kill her, Eliot. She probably watched some episodes of Burn Notice and got a few tips."

No... no matter what Hardison thought, something just wasn't quite right. Eliot grabbed a tissue from the bathroom and used it to pick up the water glass. "Here. Take this for prints."

Hardison glared. "Yeah, I'll just break out the dusting kit and the scanner and search through the massive databases to vet a  _client_ , Eliot. I did a check before I even agreed to meet with her, you know."

"Not with her prints, you didn't. Remember a little guy named Dubenich?" Who could forget that betrayal? And that moment of realization, when it clicked that they had been played. Why did this feel like that? "Clients can be dangerous, too. Just do me this favor, all right?"

"Ugh… fine. Gimme." The hacker made a little crab claw-like motion for the glass, which he perched on the end of the room's singular pen and then got up to drop in the plastic laundry bag hanging in the closet. "I'll be in Lucille. Unless you wanna come with."

That was a tough call. Eliot never liked to have the team split up, anyone out of his reach if anything went wrong. But, that was a reality of working with a team, and so he had to make the most strategic call… if not always a perfect one. "Just pull around down there, where I can see you from the window. Don't want to leave Parker alone."

Hardison's smile was sad and snarky at the same time. "Yeah, well, can't protect her if we go splitting up the team, either, you know."

Really? He was going to push that right now? "Wrong," said Eliot, scowling. "That's exactly what I'd be doing and why I'd be doing it. Just… go on. I'll keep an eye on you."

The hacker sighed, but he took his laptop, the laundry bag with the glass, and a room key and slipped out.

Alone, at last, Eliot sank onto his bed and buried a hand in his hair. Damn this day. He'd had his share of bad ones, but these hours just insisted on dragging on, building up, getting worse, with not a single thing he could do to stop the triage except badger his friends into not taking their idiot pills.

 _The most strategic call,_  he repeated to himself.  _Not necessarily the perfect one._

Then he snorted. Who was he kidding?

_Never the perfect one._

* * *

It was somewhat comforting to be working in Lucille, to be doing something normal. Well, normal for Hardison. Normalcy was one of those things that was definitely relative.

He immediately opened one of the individual-sized bottles of Orange Squeeze in Lucille's mini-fridge that he kept stocked for stakeout and hacking emergencies, and by the time he'd dusted Charlotte's water glass for her fingerprints, transferred them, and scanned them, it was long-empty. He was on his third bottle when his computer finally got a hit.

"Charlotte Dahl," he read out loud. "Yep. Thought so. Let's see… graduated top five percent of her class from Virginia Tech, employed by World Coalition for Aid and Relief, aka WOCAR, for eight years. Man, she's been all over… Nigeria, Azerbaijan, Tanzania, Pakistan… Prints match from a background check run through the State Department..." He shrugged. "Looks legit to - "

The computer beeped again.

A second match? It must have been a duplicate in another database. He pulled up the new window that had opened, started reading… and nearly dropped his soda bottle.

"What the… wait a second." He typed in a string of much more complicated commands, ducking past one of his favorite firewalls to bypass in the world, and dove into a hidden directory.

He had to set the bottle down.

"Holy. Freakin'. Crap." He closed his eyes and tried to control his breathing. Oh, this was so bad. So bad. "Calm down, man," he whispered to himself. The breaths weren't coming as steadily as he would have liked. "Calm down. Gotta tell Eliot. Oh man, Eliot. Parker!" The hacker snatched his laptop from its hookups to the van equipment and shoved it into his bag as he simultaneously threw open Lucille's side door to clamber out. He nearly tripped over himself sprinting up the hotel stairs and swiped his room key too fast on the first couple of tries. But, finally it registered, and he burst into his and Eliot's room to find the hitter wide-awake and on his feet.

"What? What did you find? I saw you out the window."

Hardison struggled to string a coherent sentence together - so much was trying to come out at once. "I got - Charlotte Dahl was legit, but - see, got a second hit - oh, man, we have to - Eliot this is - okay, wait, just let me - "

"Hardison!" Eliot hissed. "Calm down! Start from the beginning."

"Man, there might not be time for - okay, here, just look." Hardison opened the laptop and practically shoved it at Eliot, who was already reading the screen before grabbing it.

The hitter's eyes darted back and forth, and as he scrolled further and further down, they got darker and darker. "Where did the second ping on the prints come from?" he growled.

"French domestic intelligence. It's an open investigation. The primary agent on the case - "

"Died in an apartment explosion a week ago. I see that."

"Sound familiar?"

Eliot swore. "Just like Dahl's story. So this guy figured out Charlotte Dahl was - "

"Also registered as a junior attaché - "

"At the embassy, yes, I  _see that_ , Hardison!"

"And you know what attaché means - "

"Dammit! I should have put it together earlier."

They both should have. 'Attaché' was the easiest cover to see through in the world. But they hadn't been looking for it. It had been staring them in the face and they hadn't so much as spared it a second glance. They'd been off-balance after the failed job and their internal conflict. They'd been sloppy.

"I ran the facial recognition through the Langley servers." Hardison reached over and executed a couple of keystrokes to bring up the file that matched Charlotte Dahl's picture. "And sure enough…"

"Morgan Gray… alias Charlotte Dahl," read Eliot, though he didn't need to; the hardening of his features meant he had connected the dots, too. He looked like he might smash the computer into the wall. "She's freakin' CIA."

They stood in silence for a beat, looking at each other, and then they were in motion. Eliot threw open the adjoining door on their side, but instead of the girls' door being cracked, it was locked tight.

"Parker!" yelled Hardison, banging on the door. "Parker! Open up!"

"Stop," snapped Eliot. "Back up."

"What? You aren't seriously - "

"Move!"

"Eliot, no! These hotel room doors have steel-reinforced frames and - "

"You ever seen somebody break multiple bricks with one hand?"

"Yeah on YouTube - "

"Hardison. Trust me. I make those guys look like little girls."

"…Fine." Running through the calculations in his head, but scared for his life if he stood in Eliot's path right now, Hardison ducked out of the way.

The sound as Eliot roundhouse-kicked the door latch was like the contents of a value-size box of fireworks all going off at once. The effect was almost the same, too; the door practically exploded into the room, contained only by its hinges.

Hardison's stomach lurched wildly even before they entered, because one of the bedside lamps was on - had been  _left_  on - and he could clearly see the whole room.

Parker and Charlotte Dahl - no, and  _Morgan Gray_ , CIA - were gone.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Friday, everybody! Chapter 5 already...wow! And it's a bit of a monster. Oh well. Don't get too used to it... haha! As always, huge shout-out to everyone who's read and reviewed; I love to know how you're liking the story. And another big thank-you to valawenel, who helped me to nail down the structure of this chapter and get it just right. Okay, onward!

   

                "I'm going to kill her." Eliot's voice was sandpaper.

                " _You're_ going to kill her?" said Hardison. "Get in line."

                "Aren't you finished with that yet?"

                "After all this time, you still think I wave a magic wand to do this stuff, don't you?"

                Eliot released a very controlled breath, counting backward from a hundred. He felt himself about to snap, and he needed to get a handle on that immediately. Worry, anger, guilt - he had to put them off for now. No time.

                Dammit, no time.

                He began pacing the room again. He couldn't stand still. There were situations when he could remain unmoving for hours, days even. But not when action was demanded of him. Not when he was like a restless racehorse in the starting gate, waiting for the gun.

                He glanced at the note, a scribble on the hotel's courtesy pad of paper, that was sitting on his bed. Neither he nor Hardison had touched it since retrieving it from the adjacent room, where it had been sitting beside Parker's abandoned cell phone. It might as well have been a poisonous snake.

 _See you in Paris!_  
 _-Parker  
_ _(and Charlotte)_

Sure, Charlotte Dahl was actually a CIA agent named Morgan Gray, but this silent, sneaky departure had Parker written all over it. Had that twenty pounds of crazy ever actually given up hope of taking this job? At this point, all signs pointed to no.

                And he should have seen them. He should have known Parker would be freakin' Parker.

                Walking right into what had to be a trap.

                "All right," Hardison finally said. "They're booked on the American Airlines flight to New York that left at ten forty-five… dang, Parker must have been driving for them to make that… probably hot-wired a car. They're checked in. Booked under Sarah Michaels--that's one of the identities I made for Parker when we moved to Portland--and Charlotte Dahl. Yeah, they're not even trying to cover their tracks."

                "She wants us to follow," said Eliot. "But she hasn't given us any extra ammo to stop her. This is definitely Parker, not Gray. At least right now. But, hundred bucks says this is exactly what Gray wants. When's their flight to Paris?"

                "Six am. It's seven hours… puts them into Charles De Gaulle airport at seven pm, local time." Hardison rapidly typed something and continued, "We can't get anything that lands before then. I can get us close, though… seven forty-five."

                "What if we caught a charter right now, to New York?"

                "Might take us a couple hours just to wake somebody up at this hour for a last minute contract."

                "Then just find us a plane."

                "So you can, what, pilot us straight from Seattle to Paris? Can you even fly a damn plane? Eliot, listen, I can get us in forty-five minutes later."

                "Forty-five minutes is an eternity for a kidnapping or a hit, Hardison. Anything could happen in forty-five minutes!"

                "And it's the best that we can--"

                Eliot erupted. "Dammit, Hardison! Our best isn't good enough!" He had to calm down. He had to get control. But three months' worth of frustration and unadulterated rage suddenly overflowed even what he could just file away. Everything they stood for failing spectacularly. Getting conned by the frickin' CIA. Parker taking matters into her own hands, with a one way ticket to prison, or worse.

                With a wordless roar, he grabbed the object closest to him, which was a floor lamp, and slammed it Roy Chapel-style into the headboard above his bed. The headboard, made from lacquered particle board, cracked in a jagged set of lines that radiated from the point of impact like a sunburst.

                Then, silence. Hardison wasn't even breathing.

                Eliot tossed the lamp on the bed and closed his eyes. Nothing to say. Nothing that could be said. He took an inventory of what was going on inside his head. He felt… not _better_ ; that wasn't the word. Manageable. The anger had been transferred, the overflow dealt with for now. A nauseating lapse of control that had at least opened a valve and relieved some of the pressure. He'd put off grappling with the larger, darker problem, but he knew the choreographed moves to that fight well enough to do it blindfolded. Anyway, one crisis at a time, and Parker's damn Paris vacation was obviously most urgent.

                But manageable. Yes, it was manageable.

                Of course, Hardison wouldn't understand that. How could he? He dealt with his emotions like a normal person. Eliot had forgotten how that even worked.

                After thirty seconds or so of silence, after eternity, Hardison said softly, "I'll book the tickets."  He went back to typing.

                Another minute went by, the clicking of keys the only sound in the room--fast, constant, and hypnotic. Until…  "Hardison."

                "Yeah, Eliot?"

                He had to say _something_ , or he was going to lose the only ally he had left. Whether or not Hardison had a place to put what had just happened, refusing to acknowledge it would only unnerve the hacker more. "I'll leave some money for the damage." Not _sorry_. He wasn't.

                In that moment, Hardison surprised him. "Man, next time you just need to hit something," he said, "I'll drive you downtown to find a street gang. All I ask is for a little warning, 'kay?"

                Maybe he understood more than Eliot gave him credit for.

                "You're all right, Hardison," he said. He meant it.

                Hardison grinned that infuriating, self-important grin. But Eliot saw through it, saw that the hacker was putting it on to cover his fear and his uncertainty. His girlfriend was AWOL with a lying scumbag of a CIA operative. His best friend had just lost it and defaced a hotel room. For three months, Eliot had resented Hardison for his lack of decisiveness, his tactical errors, his failure to rise to the occasion. But maybe Hardison hadn't been the only one to ask, _"What would Nate do?"_

Eliot had demanded that of him every day.

                And still the guy stuck around and made stupid jokes and held them all together. He was the reason they'd even made it three months. If it had been up to just Parker and Eliot, they wouldn't have lasted a week.

                Eliot looked down at his boots. Boots that gave him away to the trained eye. Boots that kicked in doors and broke people's arms. Boots that ran toward the people who needed him. Not boots that ran away.

                There was a difference between a tactical retreat and just giving up. Which was it, if he left Parker and Hardison to their own devices? Which was it, if he let his anger spiral and his resentment fester? Which was it, if he went back to who he was before, like a dog to its vomit?

                Damn, this crew really had changed him. Slowly. Silently.

                Like carbon monoxide poisoning. 

               

* * *

 

_Flight 6846 - Somewhere over North Dakota_

                "Do you have orange soda?" Parker asked the flight attendant.

                "Uh… no, I'm sorry. We do have Coca-Cola products, coffee, hot tea--"

                "Doesn't Coke make some kind of orange soda?"

                "I'm… not sure, ma'am. But can I offer you something else?"

                Parker's brows drew together, and she scrunched her nose. "I guess I'll have some coffee."

                Morgan Gray glanced at the cheap, beaten-up digital watch on her wrist. 11:39 pm, Pacific Time. Parker practically hummed with energy even when she was sitting still--sort of like a refrigerator. Adding caffeine on top of that sounded a little frightening. "Hey, Parker? Are you sure you want to--"

                "She'll  have a coffee, too."

                The flight attendant smiled, looking somewhat relieved. "Two coffees, then."

                "Uh, actually, just water for me, if you--"

                "Don't be silly," said Parker. She wiggled her eyebrows. "We have to stay up all night to plan."

                Morgan tried to manage a smile but internally groaned. This was her second plane in 24 hours, with another to go. She'd been on a red-eye from DC to Portland just last night to make her appointment with Parker and Friends, and now… headed back to Paris via New York.

                An uncomfortable chill went through her just thinking about going back there. To Carson  McMaster, who she'd have trouble not shooting at first sight. To her handler, Dave, who she didn't know whether to trust anymore. To no allies--no Gérard Nejem. Because he was dead.

                Gérard Nejem. Thirty-four. Single. Moroccan parents, French citizen. Lactose intolerant. Two plants in his apartment, no pets. Prep cook at a mid-priced Moroccan restaurant on Rue Bretagne. Courier for Libya-based extremists. Or so she'd thought.

                It had taken three months for the Agency to identify Nejem. When they finally did, Morgan had gotten the call--a transfer out of her brief assignment in Uzbekistan to run point on the ongoing investigation into the Libyan group's activities in France. Five days ago, Nejem had supposedly been visiting relatives in Avignon, so Morgan had gotten on the same speed train and tailed him into the city. Her assignment: to approach and flip him. To get the Agency an inside man within the Libyan operation.

                She definitely hadn't counted on what he'd say when she caught up with him. About him being an agent with French domestic intelligence, undercover with the Libyans for 6 months. About Carson McMaster, the CIA station chief in France since 2008 and her boss, and how he was funneling money to terrorists.

                _Ugh_. Closing her eyes briefly, she tried to focus on the present, not on that memory. She needed a _scotch_ , not some cup of airplane coffee. But she wasn't about to give Parker, world-famous thief, a reason to ask questions. Honestly, it was a wonder she'd gotten even part of the Leverage Consulting & Associates team to help her. It had certainly been a last-ditch effort on her part, a hail-Mary from half court.

                Even though the CIA technically wasn't supposed to gather intelligence about American citizens, Morgan had seen the files on ex-insurance investigator Nathan Ford and his crew of baddies back during her days as a new recruit at the Farm, partially to learn from them and partially to be aware of them, since sometimes they interfered abroad. They'd been at the heart of the democratic revolution in San Lorenzo, for example--that was something intelligence analysts were sure of. The Agency obviously couldn't make arrests, if they were to come across the infamous crew, but, should the situation arise, officers were expected to "take care of it." These days, in the midst of budget cuts and interagency squabbling and bad press, the Agency wouldn't say no to a win. And Ford and his friends would be a big win.

                Over the course of her career, though, Morgan had never even come close to crossing paths with any of the members of Ford's team. When they were in San Lorenzo, she'd been in Tanzania. When they'd popped up in Tokyo, she'd been running for her life in Cairo. So she hadn't given much thought to the crew that had united notorious former loners Sophie Devereaux, Eliot Spencer, Alec Hardison, and Parker. They were an entity completely off of her radar… until Nejem had been killed and she had become the only living soul who knew the truth about Carson McMaster's treason.

                Everything she had told Parker and her partners had been true… except for a couple of details. First, obviously her name wasn't Charlotte Dahl. It was her long-time cover identity, though, and Dahl was supposed to be an aid worker, so that had worked surprisingly well. Second, she hadn't been the one to tail McMaster in the Libyan refugee camp; that had been Nejem. He was also the one who had actually been targeted in an apartment bombing - just after he had called her to tell her about a breakthrough that she had to see in person.

                That was where Nate Ford et al. entered the picture: the morning after the "gas explosion" that had taken out Nejem, an envelope had been sitting just inside her hotel room door. Its contents was a short note, written on plain paper:

 _Leverage Consulting & Associates  
_ _hhgtm AT mail DOT net_

A Google search hadn't turned up much, but a classified database query had been a different story. Leverage Consulting & Associates was the former cover of none other than Nathan Ford's crew, who, if rumors were to be believed, now fancied themselves modern day Robin Hoods or something. Of course, that a band of renowned criminals would be any help to her, whether they were rumored to have gone straight or not, had sounded about as plausible to Morgan as Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny.

                And the note itself was problematic. It meant someone else _did_ know something about what she'd been doing. Making contact through that email address could be the biggest trap she'd ever walked into, some test laid out by a suspicious McMaster or his Libyan allies.

                But, if there was going to be an attack in Paris, and if she was the only person who could do anything about it and nail the man responsible, she was going to need help.

                She had been very careful, constructed a burner email address and forwarded it through three more, each based on a different continent. Morgan was no Alec Hardison, but she had picked up a thing or two about covering her cyber tracks during her time in the field. She had been vague but frightened in her message, and the reply had been as simple as the note under her door:

 _May 2nd. 4:00 pm_  
 _Bridgeport Brew Pub  
_ _Portland, OR_

                And because maybe she was crazy or really that desperate, she'd gotten on that red-eye, and she'd walked into that microbrewery, and she'd presented Gérard's story - framed by her cover and accompanied by a little prayer. But she honestly hadn't been surprised when neither Eliot Spencer nor Alec Hardison had been leaning toward helping. She'd read it in the lines around their eyes, Spencer's closed-off stance, Hardison's fingers idly twisting with guilt. Parker, though, from the minute Morgan had walked in, had been one-hundred percent on her side--alert, interested, enthusiastic. And she hadn't wavered since.

                Parker had come out of her team's little pow-wow in the kitchen and extended her hand, which Morgan had shaken. She had explained what must have been the decision they'd all arrived at together: that the best they could do was agency tips and a new name. But then, as her male companions had turned and disappeared again, the woman who had liberated countless artifacts and priceless pieces of art from vaults around the world had lingered and said, "If you somehow ended up in the alley behind this building in, say, fifteen minutes… maybe we could talk about it again."

                Surreal, to say the least.

                Whatever her partners had decided, a light in the thief's eyes at that moment and a little bounce in her gait as she, too, walked away, told Morgan that Parker had decided to rebel against it. Which was good in some ways; after all, they were sitting on this plane. But that rebellion could also be very dangerous.

                "Right, Parker, about the plan… I'm still feeling a little nervous about leaving without your friends…"

                Parker smiled and gave a dismissive wave with one hand. "They'll catch up. I left a note."

                Yes, that danger. Even if Spencer and Hardison did decide to follow them, Morgan didn't think it would be to help out. She briefly imagined what it might be like to have your arms torn off, since those were the kinds of things Spencer had a reputation for. Or maybe she'd get lucky and Hardison would just erase her identity, or upload a worm that stole all of her meager government salary.

                Then there were the dangers of accepting help from someone like Parker in the first place, who, at the best of times, was classified in intelligence and law-enforcement circles as a little bit wackadoo. Less optimistic profilers pegged her as a loose cannon. This rebellion business was convincing Morgan more and more of the latter, though unpredictable help was probably better than no help at all. At least, that was what she kept telling herself to keep from just throwing up her hands and quitting.

                And she did have to hand it to the thief… the girl was sweet, if a little _off_.

                "Do you really like orange soda or something?" Morgan asked as the flight attendant passed them their coffees.

                Parker shrugged. "It's okay."

                Morgan's right eyebrow crept up. "Sounded like you really wanted some to me."

                "Oh--yeah. I did." A pause, then, as if it clarified everything, "Hardison drinks it all the time."

                Interesting. Parker might be trying on rebel status, but she was already missing what she'd left behind.

                "How long have you two been dating?"

                "How'd you know that?"

                "Your friend Eliot told me." And it was obvious, in a sort of precious way. But the less Morgan referred to her own powers of behavioral observation, the better. Sometimes she had to catch herself and remember that Parker wasn't on her way to help Morgan Gray. She was there for overly-curious, socially-awkward Charlotte Dahl.

                "Aw, Eliot." A conspiratorial smile etched Parker's face. "He's all gooey inside."

                "Really? He seems pretty… solid to me."

                "Eliot's like a Tootsie-Roll pop. When you bite his head off, there's a squishy surprise inside."

                That. Was a disturbing image.

                "I'll take your word for it." Of course, Spencer hadn't told her about Parker and Hardison of his own volition; he'd just been answering a question. But it was worth noting Parker's appraisal of the infamous hitter. If there was, in fact, something squishy in there, though, it was obviously buried deep, deep, _deep_ down.

                "So," said Parker brightly, changing the subject. "Ready to plan? I promise, your part won't be that hard. You just have to be yourself."

                If only that were true, thought Morgan with a wry smile. She couldn't help a quiet, ironic laugh as they settled into the most bizarre trans-continental conversation she'd ever had.

 

* * *

 

                Well, the good news about Eliot's Barry Bonds moment was that it seemed to actually calm the hitter down. He'd been practically zen ever since. Though, with Eliot, that didn't mean that everything was all sunshine and rainbows - just that things were under control. There was a dullness to his gaze that meant he was at war inside and definitely not _okay_ , but at least they were moving and Eliot hadn't brought up breaking up the team in over eight hours. The lamp thing must have been like taking the lid off a pot of boiling water so the bubbles didn't overflow… and Hardison could understand that. The boiling water was still boiling, though. That was the bad news. And that Hardison's blood pressure was still recovering. Seriously, he needed some normal friends.

                To make up as much time as possible between Parker and Morgan Gray's arrival in Paris and their own, Hardison and Eliot had taken the earliest flight they could get to Chicago and landed an Air France direct flight from there into Charles de Gaulle. They'd actually done better than Hardison's original estimate, too, because their plane got in early, at 7:26. But that was still 21 minutes behind the girls' flight, which had been right on time at 7:05. Eliot was right… a lot could happen during a window like that. There was no sign of the girls at the airport, and all that Hardison could learn from hacking the security feeds in the building was that they had taken a cab into the city. Even the metro would have been more helpful--more cameras--but in a taxi… they were ghosts now.

                He tried not to think too much about Parker, because that shot him right into a vortex of worry. He would start to blame himself for not seeing in her eyes what she was about to do, for not hearing it in her voice when they'd talked together in her hotel room. He couldn't shake the feeling that he should have known her well enough to see this coming. Despite her best intentions, the last time Parker had done something like this and gone rogue, she'd been trapped inside Wakefield Agricultural Worldwide. They'd barely survived that ordeal, and that had been working with the whole team, plus Archie Leach. This time it was just Hardison and Eliot against the whole damn world.

                But, the best thing he could do for her right now was focus. _Get it together, Hardison_.

                At least this hotel room was a significantly nicer base of operations than the last one. With a little bit of time that he hadn't had in the midst of their Pacific Northwest escape, and since their faces weren't likely to be posted all over Paris anytime soon--knock on wood--Hardison had inserted them into a suite at the Mandarin Oriental, a five-star joint on Rue Saint-Honoré in the heart of the fashion district.

                "This is more like it," he said, dropping his duffel bags in one of the bedrooms and returning to the common space. "At least we can search for Parker without worrying about bedbugs."

                Eliot, luggage-less, glanced around the luxurious accommodations, feet apart and arms crossed. He hadn't said much since they arrived in Paris, but it was more of a contemplative silence than a furious one, which was a huge relief.

                "Whatcha thinkin', Lincoln?" Hardison ventured.

                "We're going to need a few things."

                "Why? You got a plan?"

                "Beginnings of one, anyway. Let's go over what we know. Pull up Gray's file again."

                "Can do. And, now that we know who she really is, the background dirt I can dig up might be more helpful." He pulled his laptop out of his backpack and immediately set to work, taking advantage of the fastest Wi-Fi signals within a three-block radius. "All right. Here we go. Hey, tell you what--hook this cable up to the TV--yeah, yeah, right there. No… no, it's on the--no, on the back--Eliot, for the love of all that is electronic, you need some serious help, man."

                "Get up and do it yourself, Hardison!"

                "You act like you ain't got two eyes. Find the hole that fits the end. Didn't you ever play Tetris or nothin'?"

                "Sorry, I was too busy playing sports and getting dates," growled Eliot as he looked behind the television again. "Not that you'd know anything about that."

                "Whatever, man. That was back in the stone age. Now we livin' in the age of the--"

                "Don't even finish that sentence. I will rip out your larynx."

                Hardison's hand dramatically flew to his chest as if he'd been wounded. "It hurts my feelings that you feel the need to resort to threats. If I was actually scared of you, I would've high-tailed it out of there back in Seattle. Plug the damn cord in."

                Eliot muttered something that sounded dangerous and inappropriate for viewers under age thirteen, but Hardison smiled slightly and breathed a little easier. This was a rhythm he could work with. Even if it meant dealing with insults and empty threats, better for Eliot to be putting up with banter than stuck in his own head. That was when Hardison had to start worrying.

                "There," said the hitter. "Is that it?" The enormous plasma TV came to life with the display of Hardison's laptop.

                "Hey, not bad." Hardison offered a thumbs up and started pulling up files. "All right. Briefing time."

                It had been weird enough to brief when it was just the three of them. And then there were two.

                _No, Hardison, don't think like that. The team is going to be fine. The team is going to be fine._

                "Okay," he started. "Morgan Gray, alias Charlotte Dahl. Turned thirty this past December, joined the CIA when she was twenty-two and got her first assignment at twenty-three. Looks like…yeah, I can get her marks from the Farm. So she tested out in the top ten percent in basic tactics and protocol, average in marksmanship, but top of the class in interpersonal exercises."

                Eliot grunted and sat down on one of the long sofas that anchored the perimeter of the room, each upholstered with bold geometric shapes. "So she's basically a grifter," he said. It was a statement, not a question. His eyes flickered like he might be on the hunt for another floor lamp.

                "Well… technically what she does is called 'asset cultivation and espionage,' but, yeah. She's like the grifter version of a privateer. She does what she does for the government instead of herself."

                "What do we know about her before the Agency?"

                "Georgetown School of Foreign Service, International Politics major with proficiency in Arabic. So that, at least, was actually the truth. Her parents are Duncan and Mariam Gray. Mariam used to be a high-profile K Street lobbyist for the Armenian diaspora, and Duncan, or should I say _Lieutenant_ Duncan Gray, is the Air Force Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance."

                "Her dad's in the Department of Defense."

                "Yep. Looks like it."

                Eliot shook his head and massaged his temples with the thumb and middle finger of his right hand. "Okay. Hot-shot DC pedigree."

                "Well, Daddy might have gotten her the job, but she's done pretty well for herself. Look at this list of assignments."

                Eliot took in the wall of text scrolling down the screen. "There are really squirrely areas on here. You're right. She must be good, or she wouldn't have made it out alive from some of these places."

                "Heck, she must be good, or she wouldn't have fooled us."

                The glare the hitter shot across the room clearly said, _'Thanks for the reminder'_ in a very sarcastic yet non-verbal way.

                Hardison quickly threw something else up on the screen. "Here's what we got from the French domestic intelligence case file. Bare bones… just a couple of background checks, including the Dahl alias that tipped me off to check the Langley servers. Okay, let me…" He ran a couple of scripts, decoded a password, and was soon into the personal files of the case's principal investigator. "Bingo. I love Wi-Fi. I also love the Cloud. Do you know how easy it is for me to take stuff stored in--"

                "Hardison. Geek spiral."

                "Right. Sorry. Anyway, check this out. From the files of the guy who died in the apartment explosion, which he was keeping off of his work servers and weren't destroyed because, you guessed it, they were in the Cloud." He zoomed in on a personal photograph of the agent, taken from a small folder of vacation pictures, and matched it to the personnel files of the Direction Centrale du Rensignement Intérieur. "His name was Gérard Nejem. Looks like Nejem was working undercover with Libyan extremists--here are all his case notes about it--and he red flagged… hey, he red-flagged that guy Gray was talking about, Carson McMaster. As a possible financier for the Libyans. Hold up a second… there's an audio diary file."

                The speakers on the television crackled, and then a tenor voice began speaking in French. "C'est Officier Nejem. Aujourd'hui je suis allé au camp de réfugies. Pendant que j'étais là…"

                "Okay, uno momento…" said Hardison. "Running translation program on it… now."

                The video restarted, this time with the French speech at a lower volume, and a computerized English voice over top of it, spitting out the translation.

                "This is Special Agent Nejem," said the semi-creepy robot voice. He should look into improving that, maybe give it Halle Berry's honey-sweet cadence, or something. "Today I went to the refugee camp. While I was there, I tailed known members of the group with which I have been undercover for six months. I overheard a conversation between these men and Mr. Carson McMaster, an attaché at the American embassy. They were discussing payment for a planned terror attack in Paris. Unfortunately, I was not able to learn much more, as I had to quickly disappear from my hiding place when the meeting broke up."

                "This is exactly what Gray told us," said Hardison. Why would she go through the elaborate charade of pretending she was someone else, only to tell them the truth?

                "Yeah, except she pretended it had happened to her," said Eliot.

                All right, maybe _that_ hadn't been the truth.

                Hardison went back a few folders and started flipping through more of Nejem's files related to McMaster. There were a lot of them; the guy had been incredibly--overly--thorough. "Where's… ah ha! Check it. Surveillance photos from the next day." With a keystroke, he displayed them full-screen on the television.

                The photographs, taken from a few different angles outside of what must have been the American embassy, showed a tall, fair man in his mid to late forties shaking hands with, and then ushering inside, none other than Morgan Gray.

                "That McMaster?" Eliot asked.

                "Sure is. And Nejem made the connection we didn't--McMaster is the division head for the CIA in France. 'Attaché,' my ass." Was there anyone working at the embassy who was actually a _diplomat_?

                Eliot stood back up and started pacing. Hardison surreptitiously glanced at him to make sure he wasn't making any sudden moves toward light fixtures. "So Gray knows McMaster," muttered the hitter, probably more for his own benefit than Hardison's. His tone was absent, like he was just talking out loud to fit a piece into a giant puzzle in his head. "They're both CIA, she comes to Paris, and they meet."

                "Based on these notes--and Nejem took a lot of them--Gray arrived that day, _after_ the refugee camp incident. I don't know what that means yet, but they're obviously connected."

                Eliot stopped and peered at the screen. "All right, let's start with Nejem, like how Gray picked up his story. And who took him out. Maybe that'll give us a clue about what Gray is up to, and why she tried to lure us out here. We need to figure out if she's working with McMaster ASAP. That means finding people who might know both Nejem and McMaster. Print off some photos."

                "Aw, man," groaned Hardison. "You're gonna say we have to talk to the Libyans, aren't you? Ain't you ever seen _Back to the Future_? You shouldn't mess with Libyans."

                "No." Eliot was still staring at the television, at the pictures of Gray and McMaster, like he could uncover all of their secrets with his eyes. "The Libyans shouldn't mess with us."

                Hardison stopped himself from smiling at that, but he allowed a mental high five. Floor lamp smashing be damned, Eliot had his job face on. The chips were down, and the odds weren't great, but at least they were back in the game.

                Hardison wasn't really into consulting "the odds," anyway. That was the Head's thing, not the Gut's.

                _Hold on, Parker,_ he thought. _Your boys are coming for you._


	6. Chapter 6

"Did you know," said Parker as she adjusted the satchel on her shoulder, "that the American embassy in Paris is the oldest diplomatic mission of the United States?"

"Uh…no," said Charlotte Dahl. "No, I did not know that."

Parker beamed up at the building towering over the sidewalk before them. "Greek revival. Look at those columns. Mmm mmm…yeah, it's too bad you can't steal buildings. I'd carry this one around in my pocket." She paused, considering. "Well, actually, maybe I'd take the Sphinx first, and at least part of the Great Wall of China… you know, now that I think about it, that would be the world's greatest - "

"It's a nice building," said her companion, who didn't look as excited about the possibilities of pilfering real estate.

Parker turned her smile to Charlotte Dahl, unfazed by her lack of enthusiasm. She was just nervous. Parker had dealt with other people's nervousness loads of times. The key was to nudge the nervous person forward, to make them take the first step. Like Hardison. Afraid to jump off a building? Nothing a little push couldn't fix.

"It's pretty inside, too," Parker assured her client. Security cameras and reinforced doors… a few keypads. Glorious. "You'll like it."

"You've… been here before?"

Parker thought back to the last time she'd stood in front of the Embassy of the United States in Paris - as opposed to the Ambassador's residence, which had actually been more recently - and how she had avoided a gaggle of security guards by flipping over the edge of the roof and crouching in the pediment over the main entrance. That had been pretty fun - maybe she could squeeze something like that in while she was in town. Or at least rappel down the Eiffel Tower. Best date idea EVER.

"Yep. Fond memories."

Charlotte Dahl blinked and glanced down at the costume Parker had helped her pick out. It had been hard to find such blatantly obnoxious clothing in a fashionable city like Paris, but Parker had sniffed out some tourist traps and made out like a bandit. (Ha! Literally!) With ill-fitting blue jeans, bright white sneakers, an "I (heart) Paris" t-shirt, and a big red parka, Charlotte Dahl blended right in with the hoards of American tourists flooding the City of Louvre - achem,  _Love_ \- in the beautiful late spring sunshine.

Sophie would have been proud; the clueless client looked perfect for her role. Now she just had to follow the plan.

"Remember what to do?" Parker asked.

"Walk into the embassy, get in line for an emergency replacement passport appointment. When you give me the signal, I pretend to faint. Stay out two minutes, wake up, say that I'm fine. And… then…?"

"That's it. That's all I need."

"And… what are you doing again?"

Parker patted Charlotte Dahl on the shoulder. "It's probably better if you just let me do it. I don't want to get you in any trouble… well, any more than you're already in!"

"I… well… okay…"

"Easy, right? Even you can handle it."

The other woman frowned. "Even me? What's that supposed to - "

"Okay! Let's do it!" Parker gave a quick thumbs up. When Charlotte Dahl didn't move, she raised her eyebrows in encouragement and whispered, "Now. Let's do it now."

"Oh! All right… okay… sorry!" Charlotte Dahl smiled her usual super-awkward, apologetic smile and sort of tottered away toward the main entrance to the embassy.

As her distraction moved into position, Parker touched her index fingers together in glee. The boys were really missing out. This was going to be fun.

Parker had given it a lot of thought as they'd hopped over the Atlantic, and she'd determined that the best place to start, based on what they knew, was at the embassy. While it wasn't super likely that an attaché like Carson McMaster would just have records lying around of his support for extremists, something like an appointment book or receipts for wire transfers or large cash withdrawals might offer a solid lead to go on. Parker had considered heading to the refugee camp where Charlotte Dahl worked and approaching the problem stakeout-style, but if someone was trying to kill Charlotte Dahl it was because they knew who she was and what she had heard. That meant the camp was probably not the safest place for her to be. And, though Parker could have done camp recon on her own, the embassy was still where they could guarantee getting their hands on something. If nothing else, they could tail McMaster from here. Plan B. And the refugee camp could be Plan C.

She grinned, thinking about the team's snarky discussions of Nate's excessive scheming, of plans past even M - where Hardison supposedly died. That briefing and debriefing atmosphere had been so… light. So easy. Why was everything with just Eliot and Hardison so hard?

She refused to accept that things would stay the way they had for these past three months. That's what this job was all about, wasn't it? Redemption. Showing them what they could do.

Because - and she was scared to even entertain the idea, so she mostly just pretended she'd never acknowledged it - if this didn't work… she knew Eliot really would leave. To keep them safe. Totally ignoring whether that was really the most important thing he could do or not.

Out of habit, she checked her satchel one more time, mostly to give her fingers something to do besides reach into the pockets of the people walking past her. She didn't used to think like this. She didn't used to think about other people at all. That had been a lot easier.

Hmm… too much thinking about thinking. To make it stop, she got going. Doing had always helped put her brain on pause. When it was just instincts and movement, that was safe and comfortable, a space she had carved out to escape from her own head.

Her own slim-fitting clothes and side-braided hair didn't grab any second glances from the passersby as she flanked the embassy building on its right side, where it ran right up against the street. She crossed the narrow road there to use the sidewalk on the other side, deftly avoiding the gaze of the  _gendarmerie_  officer on the corner. No fence to climb here… just cameras and an employees-only entrance, which she carefully approached.

She pulled an mp3 player out of the satchel and placed the chunky headphones attached to it over her ears. Then she lit a cigarette lifted from a cab driver, with a match from the book that she kept in her pocket for when she got bored, and found the place in front of the side entrance where she would be just within sight of the door's main camera but only one step away from its blind spot underneath. Finally, she approached the location, turned at the very last second to back into the camera's view, and pretended to take a few long drags on the death stick.

The response time of the embassy guards was like clockwork; not thirty seconds had passed since she'd posted herself at the entrance before she heard the door open behind her.

"Excuse me, ma'am, but you're not allowed to be back here."

Parker waited, tapping her toe a little bit in time to imaginary music. She thought about humming, too, but she didn't want to oversell the bit. Sophie was always telling her to give people the idea, but let them come to their own conclusions. Too much, and you ended up like Hardison as the Ice Man: hostage of some Russians and forcing your friends to bail you out with an incredi-heist.

Right now, she had only Charlotte Dahl as backup… so she needed to be extra careful.

"Ma'am?" tried the guard again. Then, in American-accented French, "Excusez-moi, madamoiselle?"

One more second… be patient… and…

She felt a hand on her shoulder.

There.

She screamed, flinging the cigarette and mp3 player into the air as she spun around, at the same time stumbling toward the entrance, right into the camera's blind spot. When she "lost" her balance, she caught herself with her hands on the guard's chest, one of which smoothly unclipped his personnel badge and slipped it into a side pocket of her satchel.

"Pardonnez-moi!" she exclaimed, reaching up to take off the headphones and hang them around her neck. She couldn't think of anything else to say in French except,  _"crèpe"_ or  _"omelette du fromage,"_  though, so she muttered something nonsensical under her breath instead.

"That's all right, ma'am," said the guard, who looked as if he might have actually been startled by her fake reaction. He stooped to pick up the mp3 player, and as he bent over, Parker glanced past him through the open door.

Just one guard at this entrance, exactly like she remembered. Good. No one else to notice the missing badge for a while. She'd picked her mark well.

He stood up again and handed the mp3 player back to her, but she didn't smile. "Americans…" she said disdainfully, with the best French accent she could - better than his, anyway - and stalked away from the entrance.  _"Leave them wanting more,"_ Sophie would have said. Or something. Maybe Parker shouldn't have zoned out so much during those monologues about acting technique. It had been so much easier when the grifter was just inside her ear.

But the guard didn't follow her or anything… so she must have gotten a thing or two right.

The main entrance's security was a completely different game altogether. Here, visitors passed through a couple of checkpoints, oodles of security personnel milled about, passports (if you hadn't lost yours) were checked, bags were searched… much more of a circus. Fortunately for Parker, the circus was perfect cover for what she was about to do.

Getting through the checkpoints was easy as pie - even a little fun. She had to leave her satchel at the door, but it was practically empty, anyway, once she put on the blazer that had been folded away while she was stealing the side entrance guard's badge. The badge itself she tucked into the right side of her bra, so that when the metal detector went off at the clip, she could just shrug and blame "the underwire." Guards didn't like to talk about stuff like that.

Past the checkpoints, the big marble lobby reminded her of a train station, with roped-off lines and counters with consular personnel sitting behind them. This was as far as most people got, but Parker was planning on going a whole lot deeper into the building. That meant distraction time.

She glanced around while pretending to check the appointment card she'd "borrowed" from a folder that had walked past under someone's arm. Charlotte Dahl was right in position: in the middle of the long "lost passport" line that Parker had known would be overcrowded during a high-traffic tourist time like this. Pickpockets were extremely active in Paris, particularly around landmarks, and every day hundreds of passports went missing with peoples' purses and wallets. And, fortunately, a nice, crowded embassy was perfect for Parker's plan. It was like Paris itself wanted them to do this job.

 _"See?"_  Parker wanted to say to the absent Eliot and Hardison. Hopefully they were on their way and soon she could tell them to their faces.  _"Even Paris wants us here."_

 _"Cut the chitchat and get it done, Parker,"_  Eliot would have said. Or growled menacingly. Or tried to drag her back to the U.S. without a word.

Right… that was why getting a head start on the boys had been essential for this to work.

The agreed-upon signal that Charlotte Dahl was supposed to be waiting for had to be both obvious and forgettable, so Parker had decided to rely on a sound instead of something visual. Just in case her accomplice wasn't paying attention - normal people weren't exactly known for their powers of observation; that was part of what helped Parker do her job so well - a sound would be easier to only have to do once. The metal stanchions holding up the ropes for the lines had immediately come to mind.

Now she casually went over to one and practically mowed it down, knocking it to the ground with a booming clang that echoed throughout the cavernous room.

"Sorry!" she apologized with a hushed whisper and winning smile, and she glanced around at the people surrounding her and ducked her head a little, as if in embarrassment. That allowed her to look straight at Charlotte Dahl.

Charlotte Dahl looked back, but instead of suddenly collapsing in a contrived faint, she opened her eyes wide at Parker and… did she subtly shake her head?

 _What?_  Parker communicated back with a quick bugging out of her own eyes.  _Come on, faint. Do it now!_

But the other woman was definitely shaking her head as she took a step forward in line. She looked away for a second, then back at Parker, and gave a microscopic jerk of her head toward the left side of the room.

Parker followed the gesture. The only thing interesting over there was the very door Parker herself was about to sneak through, the one that led into a wing of offices.

She glanced back at Charlotte Dahl, but now her accomplice wasn't even facing her anymore. She was hunched over, turned completely the other way.

Parker crossed her arms and sighed. Really? Was fake fainting  _that_  terrifying? Why were people such weenies?

"Morgan?" said some guy.

Parker turned toward the voice, wondering for a second if he was talking to her. But the stocky young man who'd spoken was staring right past her. Her heartbeat slowed a little. She had to admit… it would have been nice to have Hardison and Eliot in her ear right now; she was a little jumpy.

"Morgan? Oh my goodness… Morgan!" People turned to stare at the stocky guy as he moved toward the counter. "Hey! Mo! It's me!" Practically everyone in the building was looking at him now.

Wait, no. Not everyone. Not Charlotte Dahl. Charlotte Dahl wasn't moving. She might not have even been breathing.

That was, until she turned, flashed the guy what could only be described as a  _vicious_ smile, and said, "Hey, Dave. Wake the dead, why don't you?"

Even if the entire embassy had exploded with wailing alarms at that very moment, it wouldn't have been louder than the warning bells going off in Parker's head. She processed a number of key points in the span of two quick, preparatory breaths.

First, Charlotte Dahl had just responded to the name  _Morgan_. Unless that was her middle name, that was pretty suspicious.

Second, the stocky guy - the man who she had called _Dave_ \- had an embassy personnel badge clipped to the front of his collared shirt. Charlotte Dahl knew someone who worked at the embassy. But she hadn't said anything about that when they'd hatched this plan.

Third, Charlotte Dahl - Morgan - whoever - suddenly looked completely different. Obviously her face, body, and clothes hadn't technically  _changed_ , but in an instant all the parts were seemingly rearranged, like the woman standing in the lost passport line was Charlotte Dahl's evil twin or something. For one thing, she had great posture instead of rolled forward, slouching shoulders. Now that she was standing up straight, Parker noticed for the first time how tall she was: taller than Parker, as tall as or maybe a little bit taller than Eliot.

Her face was different, too. Charlotte Dahl had wide, lost eyes, and she always looked like she had forgotten something somewhere and couldn't decide whether or not to go back for it. But this…  _person_ … radiated control and annoyance. Her stance and the look in her eye were familiar. For a second, Parker wondered if she was staring at some weird, taller version of Sophie, but then she changed her mind; this woman didn't have  _grace_  like Sophie's. Sophie, as herself, always reminded Parker of a queen. Her confidence seemed so easy, and her smile could charm anybody. Charlotte Dahl/Morgan/Not Tall Sophie, on the other hand, made Parker think of the female agents in the FBI and Homeland Security that had tried to pin down the Leverage team so many times: confident, maybe, but a little… prickly?

 _"There might be a grifter in you yet,"_  said an imaginary Sophie in Parker's head.  _"You're learning to discern things about people by looking at them."_

A grifter. That was it.

Parker blinked, and she suddenly realized what was going on. Charlotte Dahl  _did_  remind Parker of Sophie in a certain way, but now she knew why: the woman been pulling a con. She'd just emerged from it in this moment, shedding it like a skin.

The mental warning bells were more insistent now. Parker blew out the last of the second breath. Her muscles tensed as she coiled like a spring to explode into motion. She had to move before the hordes of security guards descended. But she didn't quite yet.

The Woman Formerly Known as Charlotte Dahl was looking right at her again, and Parker was able to read her lips:

_"Parker. Please. Trust me."_

Well, that settled it. Nothing says  _'Don't trust me'_  like  _'Trust me.'_

Warning bells wailing, she ran.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eliot and Hardison head to the refugee camp to get some answers, only to get tangled up with French organized crime.

                The refugee camp wasn't exactly what Eliot had been expecting.

                He'd worked and even lived in his fair share of war zone refugee camps, the vast majority of which had been little more than cities of tents and lean-tos pitched in fields or over large tracts of unfarmed wasteland - insufficiently stocked, awful to secure, and breeding grounds for disease. But this camp, just outside the city of Paris proper, wasn't much of a "camp" at all; it was an overcrowded, noisy neighborhood of government-built apartment buildings that was part of a much larger low-income housing project. Of course, that didn't mean it didn't have all of the problems of other camps, but it did introduce a whole different set of variables than more temporary structures would have. He would have to recalculate their approach somewhat.

                He looked up as they made their way down one of the streets on the outskirts of the camp, difficult but not impossible to distinguish from the rest of the _banlieue_ \- the term for a French "suburb" - by the strength and prevalence of Maghrebi Arabic over French in conversations. Some of these buildings were twenty stories high, offering countless perfect sightlines for snipers. Worse, the structures were laid out in dizzying mazes of alleys and dead-ends to the point that the exit route he was sketching in his head required constant revision and currently looked like the erratic crayon drawing of a two year-old.

                The Parisian metro didn't come out this far, so they'd had to take a morning commuter train covered in profane graffiti for the hour-long journey. Hardison had spent most of the trip typing away on his mini laptop thingie while Eliot leveled menacing glares at the knots of rough-looking  young men who might have been thinking about getting their hands on the gadget. There were a lot of those types on the train.

                Eliot was at once wary of and sympathetic for the youth who called this place their home. Disenfranchised men without employment or direction weren't a phenomenon of just one part of the world, and he recognized in their eyes the same hunger and desperation for something, _anything_ , besides their reality that he had seen in the faces of guys from Boston to Bangkok… that he had used to see in the mirror when he could bring himself to look. That recognition tugged at his desire for action, his instinct to draw something out of them that they didn't know was there, that had _worth_. But their desperation also made them reckless, and recklessness was dangerous because it could be unpredictable; it was his job to deal with the threat, not its source. There had been a time when he'd been able to offer leadership to guys like these, but that had been a long time ago, before he had become someone he'd rather kids like them not look up to, anyhow.

                The best that he could do for them was deter them with his scowl, keep them from making trouble with him and Hardison before they had to regret it.

                Everyone on the train had left them alone.

                "So… what exactly are we looking for?" asked Hardison when they reached an intersection.

                Straight-ahead, right, left - it all looked the same: children playing soccer in the street, women hanging their wash out to dry, vendors  hawking wares, teenagers on bicycles dodging pedestrians. If it hadn't been for the ethnic makeup of the citizens, this could have been any old street corner in Hong Kong or Beirut or New Delhi. Thinking about this place as somehow being special because it was a refugee camp was probably a mistake. They needed to start conceptualizing it as part of a city, with city dynamics and city establishments… with a city underbelly.

                "A betting house," Eliot said, deciding. He grabbed Hardison's arm and yanked him into the shadow of the nearest building.

                "Wha - Hey!"

                "You got any clothes in that backpack?"

                Hardison cleared his throat. "I… well, yes. I've got a few things. You know, just in case the checked bag gets lost by the airli - "

                Eliot unceremoniously pulled the bag from Hardison's shoulders and unzipped it, crouching on the ground to rifle through it. Besides the mini laptop, the hacker also had a tablet - both of these in addition to the full-size laptop he'd left in their hotel room... what need could he _possibly_ have for so many damn screens? - and a toiletry bag and, yes, a wad of clothes. Upon further inspection, however, the "clothes" only consisted of three hilariously embarrassing pairs of boxers , a nerdy graphic t-shirt, and a couple of scarves.

                Eliot eyed Hardison with a slight smirk and indicated the boxers. "Lucky Charms? Really?"

                "They were a thoughtful birthday present," said Hardison defensively. Even his chocolate skin couldn't hide a flush.

                "Whatever, man. I _really_ don't want to know." He stood up and started shrugging off his leather jacket, glad it had been his outerwear of choice when leaving the brew pub - man, that seemed like _days_ ago now. The hoodie he had layered underneath he tugged over his head, stuffing it into the backpack, leaving him in a plain, heather gray tee. "Trade me your jacket."

                Hardison raised an eyebrow. "Why are we taking off our clothes?"

                "Dammit, Hardison, just give me your freakin' jacket and put mine on."

                "All right, all right. Feel free to tone down the Mr. Pushy." The hacker peeled off his structured canvas jacket and handed it over, taking Eliot's leather jacket with his other hand and sliding his arms into it.

                Yes, that was better. Eliot's jacket was almost too short for Hardison, giving it the right feel. Instead of looking like he was ready for back room billiards and beer, Hardison managed to make the leather European. Meanwhile, the slim cut of Hardison's garment on Eliot was more streamlined than the more utilitarian outfit had been. To complete the transformation, Eliot selected the plainest scarf in the backpack and wrapped it around  his neck. Now they might actually pass for Frenchmen.

                 He zipped the bag back up and pushed it back into Hardison's arms. "Here," he said, and put his hand into the left side pocket of the leather jacket, pulling out a beanie and shoving it against the hacker's chest.

                "You just keep one of these in your pocket?" grumbled Hardison as he put the hat on.

                "I may not travel with luggage, but there are some wardrobe staples you don't go leaving home without."

                "When this is over, Eliot," said Hardison with a flat look, "you and I need to have a serious conversation about what you consider 'a wardrobe staple.'" The quote marks were audible.

                "I ain't the one with General Mills underwear, man," said Eliot, shrugging and patting Hardison patronizingly on the arm. "C'mon. Time to find a room full of gamblers."

                "In a refugee camp?"

                Eliot explained as they crossed the street. "We need to think about this place as an extension of the neighborhood. These buildings weren't built specifically for refugees; they were existing government projects that the refugees must have been moved into as a quick solution. The line between the refugee buildings and the rest of the _banlieue_ is essentially non-existent, especially since most of the lower-income residents in this area are first or second-generation African immigrants anyway. Now, _banlieues_ are known for their rising crime rates. That's where the _Milieu_ comes in, probably established here like anywhere else."

                "The what? The _meow_?"

                "Mee-lee-yuh. French organized crime. We don't know how much government-sponsored oversight there is of the camp, but you can bet the local _Milieu_ chapter has its finger on the pulse. If Nejem, McMaster, or Gray was around here, they'll know."

                "Ah, yes," said Hardison with unconcealed sarcasm. "No matter where in the world you are, you can always count on your local mobsters for customer service. I'm sure they'll be delighted to help us out." His voice returned to normal, but he crossed his arms. "So, what, we're looking for an extra-legal casino?"

                "Sort of. The French government regulates some types of gambling, but others are illegal - like spread betting. But, it's still rampantly popular. Like any good organized crime crew, the local _Milieu_ will inevitably be capitalizing on that action."

                "And we're expecting to just find the place where they do this out here in the open, on the street?"

                "Not a ton of police presence in these areas," said Eliot. "A storefront wouldn't be as ridiculous as it sounds. But our best bet is to find some patrons… and then follow them back to the hive."

                Hardison's eyes narrowed as he began surveying passersby. "See, my brand of criminal activity was conducted on the couch, not in basements or crack houses or following seedy-looking dudes back to their motherships of disrepute."

                "Then it's a damn good thing you aren't trying to do this by yourself, isn't it?"

                "You're right," said Hardison casually. Too casually. "Without you to guide me through bad guys' lairs and modes of thinking, I'm just a clueless guy with some gadgets. I'll get eaten alive on my own."

                Eliot silently ran through a creative string of expletives as he mentally kicked himself. He had to stop letting Hardison lure him into these half-conversations about the fate of the team.

                "There," he said, brushing past the subject and pointing to a group of middle-aged men at their one o' clock. Turning down a street between two apartment buildings, the men were all hunched over, looking at something one of them was carrying. "Hardison, is there a soccer game on right now?"

                Hardison muttered something that sounded like _'Do I look like Google?'_ ,but he whipped out his international-capable smartphone - another damn screen - and jabbed at it with his thumbs for a few seconds. "Yeah. Looks like Barcelona and Manchester City. Champions League."

                "I think we might've found the hive."

                A glance down the narrow street confirmed Eliot's guess. A dingy neon sign above a plain but obviously well-used door announced the presence of the "Café du Loup," but if it was actually a café, Eliot was Miss Teen USA. The last of the men from the group they'd identified slipped in as Eliot and Hardison hovered out of sight around the corner.

                Imagining a few scenarios for what might happen once they walked in, Eliot said, "Keep your mouth shut. Let me do the talking."

                "What? Why? I'm the better grifter."

                "Can you grift in another language?" replied Eliot, unimpressed. "Because everyone in there probably speaks Maghrebi Arabic or French."

                "Oh, and you speak Magical Arabic, too, huh?"

                "It's a very distinctive family of dialects."

                "That wasn't a yes."

                "Just follow my lead," said Eliot. He _didn't_ speak Maghrebi Arabic - not much, at any rate - but he was pretty fluent in Egyptian Arabic and some of the dialects of the Persian Gulf, like Iraqi, so he expected to be able to get by. He hoped so, anyway, because he definitely didn't speak French.

                Well, at least not any more than what he'd learned from hot French girls. And that pretty much amounted to _'Voulez-vous coucher avec moi?'_

The door opened onto a small landing in a stairwell, the steps of which led down into the building's windowless basement. Eliot's senses were on high alert as they descended. Loud music - French hip hop -  reverberated throughout the "Café," which took up the entire sublevel. Knots of men crowded in front of screens mounted around the room, their voices crescendoing at intervals in response to the soccer match Hardison had identified. Others moved from group to group, collecting bets and crumpled Euro bills. The air, hot and stale, was tinged with the sharp scent of grain alcohol and the old smoke of countless cigarettes. Discarded butts peppered the floor.

                "Good to know there're sketchy dives in every corner of the world," Hardison muttered, but then grunted as Eliot elbowed him in the side.

                "Shut. Up."

                A cursory scan of the room revealed no apparent VIP tables, which meant a back room. Whoever was in charge would be close by if they weren't walking the floor.

                The obvious candidate was a door on the other side of the room, behind the bar. A man stood beside it, smoking with one hand and texting with the other, seemingly uninterested in his surroundings, but his weight distribution told Eliot everything he needed to know. A sentry.

                "There," he murmured, and slightly inclined his head to indicate the door. He led the way over to it, and the texting, smoking man glanced up as they got close. He said something in French, but it was tinged with the other accent Eliot had heard on the street.

                Eliot took a chance. "As salam aleykum," he greeted the man in Arabic. The members of the _Milieu_ would know he wasn't a native speaker on sight, but he mostly just wanted to keep them away from French. If they so much as said, _"Bonjour,"_ his planned cover would be shot straight to hell.

                The man's eyebrows knit together, and he took them both in with a long look, but he offered the traditional reply:

                "Wa alaykum  as salam."

                So far, so good. As long as they stayed far, far away from French.

* * *

                Eliot's jacket was a little too short, and in it Hardison felt a little bit like he'd been shrink-wrapped. It took some serious willpower to not constantly tug at the sleeves, which didn't quite reach to his wrists, but looking like an uncomfortable teenager who'd just hit a growth spurt would probably have destroyed whatever Eliot's plan was, so the hacker kept his hands firmly planted in the jacket's front pockets.

                Typical Eliot. Giving cryptic directions and a half-glare that said, _'Don't ask why - just do it,'_ leading the way into a seedy gambling den in the middle of Super Sketchyville, France. And now they were chatting up some chain smoker in Arabic. At least, it had to be Arabic, because Eliot sure as heck wasn't speaking French.

                Not that Hardison had seen any refugee camps firsthand before, but this wasn't exactly what came up on a Wikipedia search.

                He caught a glimpse of himself in one of the  mirrors lining the wall behind the Café du Loup's bar and couldn't help but note the striking resemblance both he and Eliot bore in their traded, rearranged clothes to the betting house's patrons. He had to hand it to the hitter there; they blended in. At least _that_ element of Eliot's plan was clear. They were supposed to be French. Or refugees. Or… well… they were supposed to be something that wasn't who they actually were.

                It would have been nice if Eliot had, you know, explained what he was going for here. But, then, communication wasn't exactly Eliot Spencer's wheelhouse.

                It was a hell of a lot harder than it looked to be an effective leader - Hardison knew that. He'd experienced the difficulties of it for himself over and over during the past three months. But, even so, it frustrated him - even pissed him off sometimes - when Eliot steamrollered right over him and sat in the captain's chair without even pausing to discuss things. It had been happening more and more lately, right up to their failed job, with Eliot swooping in and taking charge without so much as an acknowledgement that he was doing it. Honestly, he probably didn't even realize what he was doing, but that was annoying, too, like he couldn't be bothered to consider anybody else. Of course Hardison didn't want to be a dictator or anything - heck, he didn't even _want_ to lead most of the time these days - but he was beginning to doubt whether the hitter really thought he was the smartest guy  he knew, after all. Whether Eliot still trusted him.

                Whether they were friends.

                Hardison wanted to rub his eyes, but he resisted that urge, too. How he longed for Nate's clear, precise directions and explanations and leadership. Nate had known how to deal with each member of the team and how to process their divergent points of view. And, if he'd ever actually been hurt by any of them, he sure managed to play it close to the vest. Hardison, on the other hand, had a heart-on-his-sleeve problem.

                _Guess you don't appreciate what you've got until it's gone_ , he thought.

                Wasn't that the catchphrase of the week?

                Up until this point, he'd willed himself to optimism about hearing out a final client, finding Parker, hunting down this CIA agent she'd disappeared with, and keeping Eliot on track. Someone had to have a good attitude. But now, watching Eliot communicate in what could have been Klingon, for all Hardison understood, and flying blind into whatever the hitter had planned, he was beginning to feel the weight of it all. Worst of all, he was beginning to wonder if maybe Eliot was right, when it came down to it. Maybe the team _was_ broken, and he'd just refused to see it. Maybe he'd willfully ignored what his gut was actually telling him.

                The man talking to Eliot slid his phone into his skinny jeans and extinguished his cigarette on the door frame, producing a small shower of ashes. One side of his mouth quirked up slightly, and he said something that had Eliot nodding.

                Then, before Hardison could really register what was happening, the door the man had been guarding was open, and they were being ushered through.

                The room beyond the threshold reminded Hardison  of the back room of McRory's, complete with poker table. Five men sat around it, flanked by a few more muscle-types standing along the room's perimeter. Apparently some things really did transcend cultures… like mean-looking criminals playing cards.

                As Eliot, Hardison, and the doorman stepped in, the men at the table regarded them lazily, but the guys standing against the walls took a few steps closer. Some of them put hands behind their backs, like they might be going for a weapon. Hardison's heartbeat increased in tempo, though he tried to keep his expression confident and unaffected.

                Eliot, too, took a step into the room. Hardison watched the hitter's gaze flick around as he absorbed the kind of information that he could process almost instantly, calculating angles and thinking about fighting patterns, if it came to that. For his part, Hardison was a little nervous, but _this_ , at least, was what Eliot did, and there wasn't any going back now. Now all he could do was hope that whatever Eliot had said to get them in here wouldn't also get them killed.

                The man sitting closest to the door stood up, discarding his cards with the flick of a wrist. The table's other occupants watched the movement closely, making it obvious that he was the one in charge.

 The man asked a question in Arabic; Eliot replied, seemingly at ease. After a more prolonged exchange, though, Hardison noticed a subtle shift in Eliot's expression, a shiftiness in his eyes that made Hardison's stomach twist. An almost imperceptible note of desperation crept into the hitter's voice.

                That was when things hit the fan.

                The leader guy spoke again, and he pointed at Hardison. Unlike Eliot, he didn't look uncomfortable at all. In fact, he was smiling. Now he was raising his eyebrows. And now… uh oh… the smile was fading. He seemed... expectant. Like Hardison was supposed to be doing something. Well, what the hell was it? Dammit. This was what happened when Eliot ran the freakin' con.

                Eliot's elbow found Hardison's ribs for the second time in ten minutes; there'd be some nice bruises to explain when they found Parker. Then their eyes met, Eliot's expression as threatening as was possible without scrunching into full-fledged demon mode.

                Hardison turned his attention back to the man, who said something else while still looking right at him, so there was no ambiguity as far as who he was speaking to. Unfortunately, there was infinite ambiguity about _what_ he was saying, because it was all in French. Hardison knew that accent; he'd used it during any number of jobs. Unfortunately, he didn't actually know the language that went with the accent.

                Eliot's words echoed in his mind: _Keep your mouth shut_.

                To hell with that.

                "Uh… oui?" he tried.

                In the blink of an eye, every gun in the room was drawn and pointed right at Hardison's face.

                Eliot swore under his breath. "Dammit, Hardison," he muttered.

                _Oh, hell no._

"Excuse me?" Hardison snarled back at full volume. Who gave a crap if these gangster jerks heard them now? They were obviously going to kill them anyway. "Dammit, _Hardison?_ How about 'Dammit, Eliot?' What the hell kind of plan was this?"

                "I told you to keep quiet." Eliot was talking normally now, too, since growling counted as normal for him. Apparently the game he'd been running was over now. Now they were just two guys in a room full of semi-automatics. Even Eliot couldn't out-maneuver nine bullets at once.

                "Yeah, well what was I supposed to do with this guy talking right at me in French, huh? You could have, like, muttered what he was saying or something, you know!"

                "I - " Eliot faltered slightly, then murmured something.

                "What?"

                "I don't speak French, all right?" he snapped.

                "Wha - _really?_ " Hardison couldn't help a sardonic, humorless laugh. "So, you were just gonna risk our lives, no big deal, without _speaking the damn language?"_

                "I spoke freakin' Arabic, Hardison! Oh, and by the way, it was working until right about now!"

                "Until somebody decided _I_ was supposed to speak French! Thanks a lot for _that_ , you - "

                "HEY!"

                Hardison jumped a little at the barked-out word. Eliot snapped to attention. They'd pretty  much forgotten about the _Milieu_ guy and his goons and their guns, hadn't they?

                "What's going on here?" asked the man. He moved toward them, his handgun level with Hardison's eyes the whole time.    

                Hardison opened his mouth to make some kind of comment about how, of course, the French mafia guy spoke _all_ the languages in the room, but his pocket chose that moment to start singing.

                _"I'm a lumberjack and I'm okay_ ," trilled a tinny voice to an upbeat tempo. It cut through the tension in the room like a bolt of audio lightning. " _I sleep all night and I work all day."_

                Hardison blinked. The man with the gun to his head cleared his throat.

                "Is that your _phone_?" asked Eliot in the world's most judgmental tone. "What the hell is that song?"

                "It's Monty Python, you ignorant ass. You know, the _classics_."

                "No, the classics are Conway Twitty and Johnny Cash - "

                "Hey! Shut up!" interjected the _Milieu_ man. Hardison felt cool metal on his skin as the barrel of the gun got pressed into his temple. "Answer it."

                Hardison tried to control his breathing. His pulse was already erratic. _Please, please let it be Parker,_ he thought. _Please let it be Parker. Not a telemarketer, not Morgan Gray, but Parker._ Because they were going to need some kind of miracle to make it out of this one alive.

                He reached slowly into the pocket and pulled out the phone, holding it up so that the display was visible to both Eliot and the _Milieu_ boss. _Unknown number._ After sliding his finger over the screen, he drew the device to his ear. "Hello?"

                "Hardison!" exclaimed a female voice on the other end. A voice with a posh British accent and a hint of condescension.

                Holy crap. That wasn't Parker _or_ Gray. And it definitely wasn't a telemarketer.

                It was Sophie.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mwahaha! The long-awaited return of Nate and Sophie. I told you they'd be back...

_10 Minutes Ago_

                There was nothing like a gorgeous spring day in London. Sophie felt very strongly about that.

                Today was one of those perfect days when early morning clouds had dissipated into a clear, bright blue sky, and people used to taking cover all day in monochromatic buildings from the gloom outside emerged to feel the warmth of the sun on their faces. Days like this, like flawless jewels, were rare enough even in May that the entire city seemed to be bunking off - that is, "playing hooky" - and, here in St. James' Park, Sophie and Nate's picnic blanket was surrounded by like-minded souls eating and playing and sunbathing.

                "What a day," murmured Sophie as she rolled up the hem of her sundress to let some sunshine soak into the skin above her knees. In about ten minutes she'd probably be red as a lobster, but until then the heat felt absolutely divine.

                Nate withdrew two champagne flutes from the basket they'd brought along and skillfully popped the cork out of a bottle of prosecco. "It's certainly a far cry from Portland," he said as he poured the sparkling wine into a glass and handed it to her.

                "Mmm, that's for sure." Sophie took the glass and sipped from it, smiling at the tingling bubbles on her tongue. "Though Portland did grow on me."

                "I told you it would."

                "No, you told me that I'd eventually figure out how to style my hair for such a rainy place."

                "And you did, didn't you?"

                "Nate, darling, don't ruin the moment."

                She glanced around, adjusting her glamorous, oversized sunglasses. A child towing a red balloon raced by, pursued by two laughing parents. Sophie couldn't help a smile at the precious scene, though a slight pang went through her, as well. For years she'd insisted to herself that she'd be a rubbish mother, what with being an international art thief and professional grifter. But, throughout her time with the Leverage team, she'd also realized that she had quite robust maternal instincts, and there was something she cherished about that role. She might never have children of her own - it really depended on what Nate wanted, and whether she'd even be able to conceive at this point, if they tried - but Eliot, Parker, and Hardison had become…

                Honestly, it sounded ridiculous to her even as she thought it, but they had become something like her children, hadn't they? The closest thing she'd ever had to them, anyway.

                Parker had needed help navigating emotions, and it was Sophie who had taught her how to connect with other people. More than that, she cared about Parker's progress, wanted more for her than the solitary life of a thief. Parker, who had once stabbed a mark with a fork, was blossoming into a living, breathing, loving human being with a thing for "pretzels." Sophie's pride at having been part of that… well wasn't that the sort of thing mothers felt?

                And what about Hardison? Once cocky and irresponsible, the hacker had gradually matured into his skills, displaying a work ethic and love of the con that Sophie recognized in herself. She'd taught him restraint and shaped his raw talent, molding him into a passable grifter and a valuable team player.

                As for Eliot… well,  he was really more like an older stepson. But, even he hadn't been unchanged by his time with the team, and Sophie liked to think that, for all their disagreements and his longtime distrust of her, she had offered him a glimpse into the power and beauty of allowing himself to feel. He hadn't come very far in expressing those feelings, necessarily, but some of his rougher edges had softened under her tutelage.

                "Children" or not, thinking about the three youngest members of Leverage Consulting and Associates - or was it Leverage Incorporated these days? Or hadn't there been talk of "Leverage International" or some such? Was anyone even keeping track except her, anyway? - made her nostalgic.

                Though, if she was being frank, it also had her a bit narked.

                 It had been, what, three months since Sophie and Nate had said goodbye to the Robin Hood life? When they hadn't heard anything from the remaining team members after the first month, Sophie hadn't thought much of it. After all, Nate had put his finger on it with _"I'd say, call if you need anything, but you never, never need anything."_ Sophie could also easily envision the trio, despite nervousness at their new independence, deliberately convincing themselves not to call the "parents" over little things. She'd even appreciated the clean break, to a certain extent, since she and Nate had spent that first month off the job sailing around the Mediterranean and - achemm - yes, sailing. Lots of sailing.

                The second month of no contact had made her wonder. Not even an email from Hardison or a prank call from Parker? She certainly hadn't expected a peep out of Eliot, but radio silence from the other two had surprised her. When she'd taken a break from the crew they'd done nothing _but_ bombard her with phone calls. Did they really need no suggestions for successful grifting? No pep talks? No relationship advice?

                That brought them to this, the third month, almost exactly twelve weeks since she and Nate had left the brew pub and the Black Book in the hands of their protegés. Still nothing. No calls. No emails. No carrier pigeons.

                Three months was simply rude.

                Either that or something horrible had happened, and she didn't even want to entertain that possibility.

                The mixed emotions of the line of thinking settled somewhat as she took a deep breath, inhaling the sweet smell of cut grass. She leaned back on her arms, tilting her face upward and catching sun on her chin around the brim of her hat.

                "Speaking of Portland," she said casually, "I was thinking maybe we could swing by in the next couple of weeks."

                Nate raised a skeptical eyebrow. "Swing by? Is it on the way somewhere?"

                "Oh, you know what I mean. Let's visit. It's been an appropriate amount of time, hasn't it? Besides, I ought to check in on the theatre and my actors… they're being taught the Meisner technique for all I know. Horrendous, horrendous acting method…"

                "Sophie…" Nate's voice took on that insufferable know-it-all tone that drove her mad. Unfortunately, she also found it insanely attractive. Ah, life's paradoxes. "They're fine."

                "What? Who?"

                Nate rolled his eyes and scooted closer to her on the blanket, wrapping an arm around her waist. "You know exactly who I'm talking about. Stop trying to grift me into checking up on them."

                She huffed. "You're ridiculous and insufferable, you know that?"

                "So you tell me. About every five minutes."

                "And yet it doesn't ever seem to sink in."

                He placed a soft kiss on her cheek that sent little chills down her back despite the midday heat. He was foolish if he thought that would be enough to distract her, but she did have to clear her head a bit before continuing.

                "Of course I'd _like_ to see Parker and Hardison and Eliot," she said, satisfied that she wasn't exactly admitting to any sort of subtle manipulation yet still staying on the subject. "Don't tell me you wouldn't, too. We could even hand-deliver their invitations, get some catering advice from Eliot…"

                "Invitations and catering? What for?"

                Casting a slow, sideways look at her fiancé, she blinked and removed her sunglasses. "What for? Our wedding, of course. What else?"

                "Our wedding? Why? It's not going to take more than fifteen minutes."

                "I'm sorry… come again?"

                "What? We walk into the courthouse, we sign the paper, we walk out, we go out to dinner. Maybe twenty minutes, if there's a line."

                "Oh my goodness." Sophie's voice came out like liquid steel. "Oh my… bloody hell." She wriggled out of his hold and stood up, brushing off her dress with the ferocity of a Wimbledon match. "You really don't have a romantic bone in your body, do you, Nathan Ford?"

                He was looking up at her with high eyebrows and upturned hands, the very picture of innocent confusion. That made her want to slap him even more. "What?"

                "That. That right there. That complete lack of consideration. Is that the image of our wedding day that you've been walking around with in your _brilliant_ brain? We walk into a courthouse and sign on the bloody dotted line and _go out to dinner?_ "

                "Sophie, it's not a - "

                "Not a big deal? Is that what you were about to say? Because, for your sake, I hope that isn't what was about to come out of your mouth." She snatched up the espadrille wedges that she'd kicked off beside the blanket and jammed her right foot into one. The other one she gestured with, punctuating her acidic words. "We are getting _married_ , Nate. And, I suppose this is news to you, but I'd like to do it properly!"

                "Sophie, it's just a legal hoop. What's a piece of paper really going to change?"

                It was like he was quoting from a little book called _Things to Never, Ever Say to Women_. Classic Nate Ford.

                "How did you ever manage to land Maggie?" she hissed.

                An ugly thought drifted through her mind that she immediately wanted to take back, but there it was: Maggie had been his first marriage, his first love, the mother of his child. Sophie was the second, the also-ran, the consolation prize. You didn't cut the cake with your consolation prize… you took her to the courthouse.

                She felt hot tears collecting behind her eyes, but she angrily turned her head away before he could see. "If this is how you feel," she managed, "then why even bother proposing?" She pulled on the other espadrille, snatched her handbag, and stalked her way to the nearest pedestrian path.

                Just fantastic. Absolutely brilliant. Eliot, Parker, and Hardison apparently didn't need her or even care enough to _check in_ , and Nate seemed intent on proving that, despite the glorious cocoon they'd been wrapped up in for three months, he could still be such a heartless bastard. Damn sexy and brilliant, but such a bastard.

                All right, maybe that was taking it a bit far. He loved her. She knew he did. But did he have to be such an idiot about it all the bleeding time?

                Sophie fished around in the handbag and yanked out her phone, which she promptly started dialing. She needed to vent. She needed to talk to someone, _anyone_ , before she exploded.

                She pressed "send" and listened as the other end of the line rang eight times before going to voicemail.

                _"It's Tara. Leave a message."_

                "Damn." She glanced down at her list of contacts, dialed the next number.

                _"Wheeeeeee!"_ exclaimed another voicemail box. _"You know what to dooooooo!"_

                The next voicemail didn't even have a recorded message. "The person you are trying to reach is not available," a woman's monotone informed her. "Please leave a message after the tone."

                "Come _on_ ," muttered Sophie, queuing up the final number.

                She had her reasons for leaving Hardison for last. Hardison… well, Hardison was sweet. Hardison was earnest. Frankly, Hardison was too understanding. He would try to see things from Nate's point of view and encourage her to do all of the things _she_ would ordinarily be advocating. Parker and Eliot would listen, maybe comment, and then move on. Sophie could vent to them without dragging them in, maybe get a little unfiltered logic as advice. Hardison, on the other hand, would make it his personal mission to help figure things out. It didn't seem fair to burden him like that.

                Then again, the cheeky little hacker hadn't called in three months. Maybe he deserved to be burdened, just a little bit.

                She dialed.  


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Parker makes a break for it, but things don't go as planned.

There were three available exits from the embassy. As Parker pivoted to break into a sprint, she had to make the split-second decision of which one to head toward.

One: The way she'd come in - the front entrance. The straightest shot, but with the most guards.

Two: The way she'd been headed - the wing of offices with the personnel badge reader-enabled lock. Fewer guards, but it could take precious seconds to swipe in, and they might have her before she opened the door.

Three: The way she'd passed up - the employees side entrance. Just one guard, but oodles of cameras. Plus, she'd have to get down the stairs, and those had access from a few different floors with any number of unknown variables.

A choice between three imperfect solutions. Her adrenaline spiked, and she almost threw her head back to let out a crazy laugh.

She lived for this.

Door number one, she decided. The simplest, shortest solution. High risk, but with speed and surprise on her side, it made the most sense. She burst into motion toward it.

Thirty feet. Twenty five feet. Twenty feet.

The security guys manning the metal detector turned to stare at her.

Fifteen feet.

One of the guards standing near the door also looked up, and shouted, "Hey!"

Ten feet.

Two more guards near the door stepped in front of it, cutting off her direct path.

Five feet. So close.

A clatter of snaps as guns came out of holsters, clicks as safeties were taken off and chambers loaded.

Parker could feel her heartbeat in her throat. She could practically reach out and touch the guards at the front door. Instead, she crouched mid-stride, letting her momentum carry her as she slid forward on the soles of her flats. She extended her right leg to sweep the feet of the two guards on the right. She still had speed. If she moved fast enough, she told herself, then they couldn't touch her. That was how she did things.

Then again, she didn't usually run  _toward_  the people trying to catch her. That was Eliot's job.

Oh, Eliot. He was going to kill her if she got out of this. Right after Hardison lectured her ear off. Right after she gave them both the world's most enormous hugs and said she was sorry.

"Brigitte! Wait!" came a voice from behind her. Feminine and familiar, but with a confident edge that Parker had only just heard for the first time thirty seconds ago. Charlotte Dahl. "Morgan," or whatever her name was.

 _Who the heck is Brigitte?_ wondered Parker as her ankle connected with those of the first guard. He fell, hard, on his rear end.

She never connected with the second guard, though, because someone reached under her armpits mid-swing and flipped her over. Her face and chest got pressed forcefully into the tile floor.

Two more guards threw their weight on her legs and back as she struggled. Someone pushed hard on the back of her head while another guard yanked her arms behind her and jammed cold handcuffs onto her wrists. By the time the flurry of movement subsided, she couldn't even wiggle her pinky finger.

The response time of these embassy guards had improved since her last visit. Maybe she should have gone with Door Two or Door Three…

 _No,_ she sighed internally. There wasn't any way she could have known. Any break for it had its risks. She'd just gotten…

She could barely comprehend it; she'd just gotten  _caught_.

What was it she had said to Hardison back during that job in Dubai?  _"You slow me down, you kill me!"_

His response had meant more to her than he'd probably understood.  _"You had to be quick because you were alone,"_ he'd said. _"If you get caught, that's it. I get it. But you're not alone anymore. You have a team. You have me. And I got you. I got you, girl."_

But not this time. This time she'd been all alone, and she hadn't been quite fast enough.

An awful taste rose in the back of her throat. This was it. She'd been caught. Nabbed. Pinched. With no Eliot on comm, no Hardison waiting in the van. No Nate with a plan, no Sophie with a lie and disguise.

"Hey!" said that voice of the traitor woman again. It was getting closer. Parker heard squeaks as the bright white sneakers they'd procured for "Charlotte Dahl's" disguise crossed the floor. "Hey. Gentlemen. Let her go, please."

"Ma'am," said the man holding Parker's head down. "I'm going to need to you back away. Everyone, make space."

"For the love of…" Charlotte/Morgan muttered something under her breath in a way that reminded Parker of Eliot for a fleeting moment. "Dave. Come over here, please."

More footsteps approached. "Mo, you know this girl?" said the voice of the stocky guy who had inadvertently revealed Charlotte/Morgan's two-faced treachery.

"Yes. She's a  _cousin_  of mine, okay? Could you please flash your ID or something?"

"And… do what?"

Charlotte/Morgan's voice was flat, yet somehow scathing. "And get her out of those cuffs, Dave. I said she's a  _cousin_."

What the heck was this crazy woman talking about? In no universe could they have been cousins. It would be absolutely impossible for Parker to have come from the same gene pool as this amazon woman. No way "Dave" was going to buy it.

"Oh -  _oh!_  You mean a - right. Sorry. Yeah, I'm on it." Dave rustled around in his clothes for a second, then took a few steps closer to Parker and her counterweights.

Whatever his ID said, it seemed to have the desired effect. The guard sprawled across the small of her back was the first to shift, then the one on her legs. The guy pushing down on her skull, though, hesitated.

"You saw what she tried to do," he said.

"What?" said Charlotte/Morgan in that dry tone. "Leave the embassy?"

"Take out my colleagues!"

"Please. The poor woman slipped."

The pressure of the hand on Parker's head increased slightly. "She was sprinting out of here. She could have planted a bomb and been trying to leave the scene."

"In that case, maybe you should be sweeping the building."

"And detaining the suspect." Man, Eliot would have been proud of this guy's protocol.

"Look, buddy, you saw Dave's badge," said Charlotte/Morgan. "Heck, I'll go get mine out of storage, if you want. Either way, this woman is now under protective custody. Let her go, or I'm taking this to Carson McMaster."

McMaster. The supposed mark of this "job," and,  _if_  Charlotte/Morgan had been telling the truth, an attaché at the embassy. Well, good to know he actually existed. But, had Charlotte/Morgan just said that  _she_  had a badge? And the way she'd said his name… like she actually  _knew_ the guy. This just got better and better…

Parker sighed into the floor.

"She doesn't leave this building until we sweep, got it?" said the guard, and then the pressure he was exerting finally lifted. Parker's head felt light as a balloon without it.

"Fine." The squeaking of Charlotte/Morgan's sneakers closed the distance in a second, and then those badly-fitting blue jeans were kneeling beside Parker. "The key to the handcuffs?" A pause. "Please?"

A ring of keys tinkled. The cuffs were unlocked and pulled away. Parker's arms flopped unceremoniously to the tile, but she didn't try to stop them. Instead, she closed her eyes and lay there for a moment.

Again, a choice between two imperfect situations. What a day.

One: Get arrested and processed. Maybe be given a phone call to alert the boys of what was going on, but maybe not. Getting arrested in foreign countries, even by your own government, was never an ideal situation. And, as soon as they took her prints, they'd all know exactly who she was. No one would take chances with world-famous thief Parker in custody.

Two: Go with whatever game Charlotte/Morgan was playing now. Was she grifting these guys just like she'd grifted Parker, Eliot, and Hardison? What was she after? Why had she brought Parker all the way the Paris?

The first option was known. Parker could predict almost exactly how it would go, barring some miracle. The second option… the problem with it was that she didn't know anything. Charlotte/Morgan had talked Parker's way out of handcuffs and out from under a scrum, but one of Hardison's favorite sayings came to mind: out of the frying pan and into the fire.

 _I hate being an egg_ , Parker mused.

The problem with option one was that it left virtually no possibility of escape. But Parker could see a glimmer of a chance, if she was released to this woman. Eliot had taught them all some things, and he'd taught Parker the most. She couldn't fight off four embassy security guards on her own, maybe, but she could take a grifter.

She decided.  _First opportunity I see, I'm out of here._ And, this time, she'd just do it the old-fashioned way and jump out a window, for Pete's sake.

Strange hands clasped gently under her arms, and her body began to lift from the floor. She opened her eyes and turned her head - which hurt her neck because of how it had been jammed sideways against the tiles - to look into Charlotte/Morgan's face. Parker frowned, trying to communicate with her expression:

_You don't fool me, lady. I don't know what's going on here, but you really stepped in it. When I get out of here, I'm going to find your collection of childhood stuffed animals and round them up, and then I'm going to arrange them for a ceremonial bonfire. And I'm going to dance around it, eating all the cereal I can fit in my stomach. That's a lot, by the way. It's going to be a big, long, super cute bonfire. Consider yourself warned._

"Can you stand?" asked Charlotte/Morgan, appearing not to have received any of Parker's telepathic threat.

In response, Parker brought her legs up under her and shifted her weight onto them.

Charlotte/Morgan kept supporting Parker under the left arm but directed her attention to Dave, who was standing off to one side looking uncomfortable. "Can we go to your office, please?"

After glancing at the security guards, who were all assembled next to the metal detector now, Dave said, "Yeah. Sure thing. I'll swipe you in."

"Thank you."

Dave scrambled ahead of them to the door with the scanner that Parker had planned to use with her lifted personnel badge, swiping his own. The light on it switched from red to green, reminding Parker of breaking into the vault during the failed job that had gotten her into this mess in the first place. If only she'd just listened to Eliot and let it go.

 _"Parker, grow up!"_ His words rattled around in her mind again.

It had made her so upset when he'd said it, but maybe he'd been right. She'd been so stupid to come alone. She'd been so… childish. Was that how everyone saw her - as an overgrown kid? Could she blame them?

The sting of rising tears blossomed behind her eyes. By the time Charlotte/Morgan had steered her through the door, her vision was blurry with them.

* * *

As they settled into Dave's office, Morgan noticed that something had changed in Parker's face. The defiance that had shone in her gaze while she was being helped off of the lobby floor had, in the span of a minute, melted into what looked like despair, an emotion that, on Parker, was honestly disconcerting. The thief had now folded herself onto Dave's swiveling desk chair, hugging her knees to her chest as the seat rotated in a lazy circle.

Morgan could have throttled Dave for calling out at her across the lobby, and for using her  _real name_ , no less. Her stomach had plummeted so quickly when she'd seen the realization in Parker's features that she'd nearly been overcome with nausea. There'd gone her only ally, just like that, all because Dave and his terrible judgment had been hanging around the embassy in a stroke of incredibly bad luck. Seriously, what were the chances of her handler loitering in the lobby? Didn't he have intelligence to be analyzing or other clandestine officers to be managing?

In the day's second surprise, Parker had made a run for it instead of playing it cool and just  _walking_  out of the building. But, as Morgan thought about it now, the choice began to make more sense. From what Morgan knew about Parker, the thief didn't really talk her way out of situations; she escaped from them. Her first instinct was flight - apparently with heavy dose of  _fight_ , too, since she'd pretty much slide-tackled that first guy at the door. Morgan could also see how, from Parker's position at that point, she herself would have been seen as a threat. You didn't casually walk away from someone who'd just conned you.

Well, maybe you did if you were expecting to be conned. But poor Parker had been blindsided.

"Hey, Dave?" said Morgan as he swept some trash off of his desk. The small action didn't do much to improve the office's overall appearance; it looked like a vending machine had exploded in here. "Could you get Brigitte some water, please? I could do with some coffee, too, if you don't mind."

Dave glanced between her and Parker. "Yeah," he said. "Of course. I'll be right back." Grabbing a fistful of plastic wrappers off of a filing cabinet, he slipped into the hallway, closing the door behind him.

Morgan listened for the fading of his footsteps, then scooted her folding chair toward Parker.

"Parker. Hey. We've got maybe two minutes before he comes back. I need you to listen to me."

Parker's eyes peeked up over her knees, her brows knit together. "Forget it," she mumbled.

"Parker, seriously, we don't have time to mess around. Your name is Brigitte, okay? Brigitte - uh - Brigitte Denis."

"Lemme guess," said Parker dully. She raised the rest of her head, but her blond hair still formed curtains on side of her face. "I'm your cousin."

Oh, thank God, she'd been listening earlier. "Yes. Yes, you're my 'cousin.' That means you're my asset. I've brought you here to give me some kind of intelligence in exchange for protection."

Parker blinked and reached up to swipe the back of her hand over her eyes. Her mouth quirked as she visibly considered something. "Oh," she said after a moment. "I guess that does makes sense."

"What?"

"You're CIA. Yeah. Wow. Now I get it." She paused, then pointed at Morgan with a finger. "Eliot's going to murder you when he figures this out."

Morgan didn't need much help imagining that. The myriad ways in which Eliot Spencer might dispose of her had become a recent recurring nightmare.

"Yes, and I fully expect him to, but that comes later. Right now, I really need you to do what I tell you."

"Or what?" asked Parker. She shrugged and tucked her head against her knees again.

They did  _not_  have time for this weird pity party. Morgan reached for Parker's shoulders and shook her. "Parker, look, there is prison, and then there is indefinite CIA detention. I need you to focus, or you can guess where you and I are going to end up."

Parker's leg's flopped off of the chair like a doll's, revealing her face again. She slumped against the backrest, but her eyes cleared a little. "What are you talking about? Why would  _you_  be detained?"

Morgan reached for her throat, where her thin silver chain and its tiny circular charm dangled. She knew that she fiddled with it when she was nervous, even knew how to use that to her advantage when she was playing a role. Right now, though, she didn't care. She  _was_ nervous. Desperate. "Because I told you the truth about McMaster," she said. "But he's not just an attaché. He's the station director of the CIA in France - my boss. And the moment he figures out that I'm trying to expose his ties to extremists, I disappear just like you."

What was probably only five seconds in reality seemed to stretch on forever, as Parker processed what Morgan had told her. "How do I know I can trust you?" she finally asked.

An ironic laugh bubbled up in Morgan's throat, but she forced it down. "Honestly, you don't. I wouldn't trust me, either."

One of Parker's eyebrows quirked, and what looked like the ghost of a smile touched her lips. "At least that sounded like the truth."

Relief spread like a warm wave through Morgan's body. "Just follow my lead," she said, "and as soon as we're out of here, I'll give you all the truth you can handle."

"Mmm… deal." Inching up in her seat, the thief straightened her back and crossed her arms. "But, if you're conning me this time, I won't wait for Eliot."

Morgan swallowed. Wonderful. A new guest star for her nightmares. "… Duly noted."


	10. Chapter 10

It occurred to Sophie as her call connected that, while it might be just past noon in London, it was barely five a.m. in Portland. Of course, Hardison had probably been up all night playing his fantasy people game, so that wasn't a good enough excuse for screening her call.

Thus, after six or seven rings, she'd determined that there must be some sort of  _I Hate Sophie_  movement in full swing. She was about to hang up before triggering Hardison's overly-cheery voicemail message, but then his  _actual_  voice answered.

"Hello?"

"Hardison!" she nearly shouted.  _Success!_

The other end of the line was silent for a moment. Was he wondering how he'd made the mistake of picking up her call? Oh, was she going to let him have it. "Ah," he finally said. Something about even the single syllable seemed forced, though, throwing up an instant red flag. "Ms.… eh… Ms. Delacourt. What perfect timing."

Sophie frowned, then almost dropped the phone. "Bloody - Hardison, are you… are you in the middle of a con?"

"Yes, ma'am, exactly. You see, we were just here in the  _banlieue_ , asking around about Gérard Nejem, and, well, I do apologize. I know that you would have preferred to remain anonymous, but our friend here was insisting that we speak in French…"

All right, there was quite a lot going on that statement, so she began by addressing the most obvious. "You don't speak French, Hardison."

"Precisely, ma'am. Neither of us do, though Eliot conveniently left that out when we began. You can see our predicament. So, as much as we have tried to respect our confidentiality agreement, perhaps you wouldn't mind speaking to the man in charge?"

Sophie blinked hard, pushing the hurt and flashes of anger at Nate's insensitivity about their wedding into the back of her mind as she stepped into the moment, replaying Hardison's words so that she could grasp everything he'd tried to get across.

There was a reason that she was one of the best grifters in the business: successfully becoming another person had everything to do with using what was authentic about your personal experience, yet never letting enough of yourself leak out as to do damage. A successful actor - a successful grifter - was someone who could process and compartmentalize life while maintaining a connection to each compartment for when it was needed. It was a delicate dance. If you went so far as to completely wall yourself off from certain compartments - say, like Eliot seemed to have done with chunks of his past - then you lost your ability to harness those experiences and emotions for the con. It was dangerous for someone like Eliot to reach into those forbidden places without having built up a tolerance and a working relationship with them, because too much at once could overload and undo a person. Sophie imagined that Eliot had once been an open, winning young man, but the things that he had seen and done were not for later use; he'd locked them far, far away. Maybe that made him a better hitter, but it limited him as a grifter.

The same was true of Nate in many ways, particularly when it came to Sam. Nate had sought escape at the bottom of a bottle, laying a brick in the wall between himself and the memory of his son with every sip of scotch. Their jobs with children had revealed Nate's inability to cope with opening a door in that wall, his spirals of unnecessary risk revealing that all he could do was tear at the bricks with his bare hands, leaving his fingers bloodied and inviting an unpredictable collapse. Sophie sensed that the same patterns had been etched in Nate's mind with regard to the murder of Jimmy Ford, as well. It worried her.

In any event, it all served to show that, while Nate and Eliot _could_  grift, they weren't grifters. That wasn't what they did, couldn't be what they did. A real grifter could transform into anyone; Nate and Eliot had limits to where they could go without endangering themselves. As for Hardison, he was too open; he didn't compartmentalize  _enough._  And Parker's limitations were with processing in the first place, knowing what to do with emotions when they bubbled up within her. To the thief's credit, however, she had come a long, long way.

Grifting was a dicey business to be sure. Sophie had, on multiple occasions, lost sight of who  _she_ really was in the midst of her aliases. That was, for her, the greatest danger - not being overloaded and torn apart or shutting out parts of her experiences, but getting lost within the compartments, forgetting that they were tools and not true lives on their own. She lost sight of what lay between them.

But not today, not right now. In this moment, she deftly packaged up her indignation and her aching and glided into alert and collected calm. There was no losing oneself when her team needed her. When her family needed her.

"Of course," she said to Hardison. "Now, hand the phone over, but don't be too eager. Look suitably chastised. I've just ripped you apart for spilling the beans. Do Eliot and Parker know what you're doing?"

"Um, no, not exactly, ma'am. I was unaware you'd be calling. But, how fortunate that you did." Hardison's voice was tight, but some of that might have been from relief.

"Oh, and Hardison?"

"Yes, ma'am?"

"You  _will_  explain this to me as soon as you're clear. That's not a question or a request."

She could hear him take a deep breath. "Of course, ma'am. That won't be a problem. Thank you."

What on earth had they gotten themselves into?

* * *

The handgun barrel resting against Hardison's temple had gone from cool to warm, probably because he was sweating like his insides were filled with glowing coals. "Thank you," he told Sophie. He meant it. Someone up there was looking out for him, if Sophie had chosen this very moment to call. Talk about timing.

_"Look suitably chastised,"_  she'd said. It wasn't much of a challenge to go from fearing for your life to looking like you feared for your career, so he didn't have to do much with his face. Swallowing, he slowly lifted the phone away from his ear and extended it to the man holding their lives in the balance.

The Frenchman, who, as they had learned, apparently spoke English, took the device with a deceptively polite, "Thank you." He withdrew his gun from where it pressed into Hardison's skin, though he tucked his elbow against his hip to keep the barrel trained on them. "Allo?" And thus the conversation began.

Seconds stretched into minutes as the man jabbered away in French. Hardison was getting pretty tired of watching everyone else have exchanges in other languages, but at least whatever Sophie was saying appeared to have the guy in a relatively good mood. At one point, he even laughed, put the safety on his gun, and tucked it back into his pants before beginning to walk around the smoky room like a girl chatting with her BFF.

Hardison chanced a glance at Eliot. The hitter raised one eyebrow an iota, but otherwise didn't react. He was watching the movements of the man in charge with the intensity of a hawk preparing to swoop down and snatch up an unsuspecting rodent.

Fine. That was his job. Watch the man, look for an opening, if needed. But, for real? Eliot couldn't spare an expression that remotely said,  _"Hey, thanks for saving our asses. Quick thinking there, buddy."_

That'd be the day.

"Bien sûr, madame," said the head honcho guy after about five minutes of conversation. "I will tell them. And we will speak soon." He hung up.

Oh, good Lord. Sophie had this guy on a hook. God bless that woman.

Hardison almost sank to his knees in relief. He was going to need something stronger than orange soda after this.

"It would seem," said the man, his accent turning 'seem' into 'see-muh,' "that we will be able to reach an arrangement." He gestured to the poker table with Hardison's phone. "Come. Have a seat."

At long last, the men standing around the room lowered their weapons, as well. Eliot sucked in a long breath through his nose, the only indication that he might be as relieved as Hardison, and led the way to the table. He took the chair next to the man in charge. Hardison slid into the next one over.

"So," said the Frenchman, and he carelessly tossed over the phone. It bounced off of the table awkwardly, landing on the floor. Hardison began reaching for it, but Eliot's hand clamped onto his wrist like a steel manacle.

"So," repeated Eliot, face unreadable. His focus was completely on the man, but his grip didn't waver, essentially pinning Hardison in his chair.

The Frenchman smirked a little. The superiority in the expression reminded Hardison immediately of Nate. "Your employer, Madame Delacourt, offered me the details of your purpose here. You thought you could have my information for free, eh?"

"Ms. Delacourt - " began Eliot.

But Hardison interrupted him. The hitter didn't know jack about what Hardison and Sophie had going on here. Of the two of them, there was one obvious person to carry on the con. "It meant an increase in our profit margin," he said. "Worth a try, right?"

"Not when it almost got our heads blown off," Eliot growled. His hand tightened, and Hardison thought his wrist might snap beneath it.

One day, Hardison was going to smack Eliot Spencer right in the face. That day might be today.

"I must admit," the Frenchman continued. "Madame Delacourt has flattered me by sending two celebrities. Alec Hardison… one of the world's most dangerous hackers, she tells me. I have my eye on you. And Eliot Spencer… " A glint appeared in the man's eye that unsettled Hardison's already knotted-up stomach. "Yes, you are quite famous. And quite valuable, if delivered alive to the right bidder."

_Oh, wonderful. So much for being out of the woods._

Eliot's features remained impassive. "I'm the right bidder," he replied, as evenly as if he'd been commenting on the man's shoes. "Whatever the going rate is, I can top it. And not kill all your little friends here, as a bonus."

That made the Frenchman grin, throw back his head, and laugh. "Oh, no need, no need, Mister Spencer. Your employer has already promised me a sum that will make it worth my while to let you go, unscathed. Apparently you are in the private bodyguard business these days. What a waste of your prolific talents."

_Thank you, Sophie_.

"Of course, I wonder what the need is for Mister Hardison here."

_Dammit, Sophie!_

"Technical support," said Hardison, before Eliot could mess things up with some uninformed bullcrap. "Once we have the information we're looking for, someone has to track this sucker down, ya dig? And that means credit cards, cameras, hacking international personnel servers - "

"You'll have to excuse my associate," interjected Eliot. "He still doesn't get that other people really don't give a rip."

The Frenchman laughed again. This time, Eliot joined him.

Hardison glowered.

"Don't worry about him," said Eliot. "He isn't known for his sense of humor."

_Not known for my… oh no you didn't._  Hardison felt his eye twitch. That smack was definitely on today's menu. "Ms. Delacourt told you why we're here, so you must know who we're looking for."

The Frenchman nodded, eyes crinkled a little bit as if he was suppressing another smile. "Yes. Mister Spencer also mentioned Gérard Nejem in our earlier conversation. It is what made me rather… uncomfortable. You see, Monsieur Nejem tends to run with a rather dangerous crowd. He is also a man who appreciates his privacy."

"Appreciated," said Eliot. "Nejem's dead."

A murmur went through the room. The Frenchman blinked twice, but recovered quickly.

"Really? There had been a rumor, but I was unaware."

Eliot crossed his arms. "Bull."

"Excuse me?"

"It's an expression. Means you're full of crap."

"Yes, I know what the expression means," said the man, an edge in his voice. "But I fail to see its applicability."

"Really?" Eliot stood up. Suddenly there were guns pointed at them again, but the hitter ignored them. "Don't tell me you don't know what's going on within the boundaries of your own neighborhood. Our intel places Nejem here at least three times a week in recent months. If a regular visitor like that stops showing up to see his would-be terrorist friends, I think you know all about it. You keep strict tabs on the Libyans, because an insurrection within the camp could upset the balance of power, lose you all your wayward, unemployed customers with their booze-driven bets." Eliot gestured to the door that separated the back room from the main room of the Café du Loup. "I think you know all about Nejem, his friends, and their planned attack."

Hardison swept his eyes over the room with Eliot's final comment. None of the men's faces registered recognition. Either they were all really good actors, or they didn't know anything.

The Frenchman (Honestly, why was Hardison calling him that now? He spoke French, but he just as easily spoke Arabic. Whatever. The guy in charge. Him.) shook his head very slowly. "I think, perhaps, you overestimate our information-gathering abilities and our interest in the internal affairs of the refugee population of the  _banlieue_. I admit that, yes, I was in fact aware of Nejem's demise. His movements  _were_  of interest to us. However, as far as this 'attack' to which you refer, I am sure I do not know what you are talking about. Of course, if you know something we do not, I would be happy to… compensate you for your trouble."

Eliot took in the henchmen with their guns raised, the Frenchman running the show, and finally made eye contact with Hardison. Hardison shrugged, very slightly, to let him know that he believed them.

"My mistake," said Eliot after a second. He turned his attention back to the Frenchman but didn't sit down again. "Tell us what you  _do_  know about Nejem, then."

* * *

"Not known for my sense of humor? Really? You're cruisin' for a bruisin', man."

Eliot snorted at the ridiculousness of that statement, not opening his eyes. The hypnotic rocking of the train made it easy to almost shut out the voice of the hacker sitting beside him.

"Seriously, Eliot. What the hell? You almost got us killed in there."

Maybe that was how it had looked to Hardison, but even after the entire room had had them in the crosshairs, Eliot had been ready. There had been a 75% chance that he could knock Hardison out of the leader's line of fire  _and_  reach the barrel of the gun in time to wrestle it away. The closeness of the encounter would have deterred the shots of all but the least loyal  _Milieu_  soldiers. On the 25% chance that he wasn't quick enough to preempt the bullet, Hardison would have still been outside of its trajectory, and while Eliot would have taken a close-range hit, the probability of it being immediately fatal would still have been low, depending on how quickly he moved and how jumpy the  _Milieu_  boss was with his trigger finger.

The point was, they wouldn't have both been killed in that moment. Not unless something had gone strangely, horribly wrong.

How about a little trust?

"Hardison. Believe me. You weren't in any danger."

"Oh no you don't," snapped Hardison. "You're using that voice, that 'I would have protected you' voice. Well, guess what, meathead? I would appreciate it if, sometimes, you inserted your own survival into your calculations. 'Cause, I dunno, you're my  _friend_. How about next time, instead of not telling me a damn thing about what you're planning, you just gimme the low-down. Would that be so hard, Eliot? Just open your mouth. It's easy. Look. Blah blah blah blah! Look at that! All you have to do is move your jaw - "

"It turned out okay, didn't it? We got what we were looking for. Sophie did a good job."

"Wha - how'd you know it was Sophie?"

"How many friends do you have, Hardison? How many of them know your number  _and_  speak French? Just in case there was more than one - doubtful, but who knows what your gnome people are capable of - how many of them could come up with an elaborate enough lie to get us out of that situation over the phone?"

"Well, when you put it that way," grumbled Hardison, "sounds like a no-brainer. But what if she hadn't called, Eliot? What if it had been just you and me and that room full of guns? You're incredible, man, but you ain't invincible."

"Hardison, I told you I had it under control."

"Then I would like to revisit your definition of under control!" With the outburst came a temporary suspension of other conversations in the train car.

Eliot waited for general chatter to resume, then opened his eyes, one at a time, and slowly fixed them on Hardison. His voice pitched low, he said, "Listen. I need you to - "

_"I'm a lumberjack and I'm okay. I sleep all night and I work all day."_

Hardison stared back at Eliot for a second, letting the ridiculous ringtone repeat. But then he reached into his pocket and withdrew the phone that he'd finally picked up off the floor before they'd left the back room of the Café du Loup. He half turned his back to answer it.

"Hello? Oh, yeah. Hey, Sophie." Hardison threw a glance over his shoulder. "Yeah, thanks for helping us out. We were in a bit of a tight spot. Next time, though, feel free to not promise a man seven-hundred fifty-thousand Euro before the end of the business day. He wouldn't let us leave until I transferred it, and Lord knows I don't have that kind of liquid…. Well, funny story, I used the account numbers of a mark that just  _happened_  to still be in my phone. Now I'm going to have to track it all down and - Hm? Oh yeah, mmhmm. Uh… " He rotated back around in his seat, blinking at Eliot. "Yeah, no, she's not… she's not really around right now. Bathroom. Yeah. See, we're - "

Eliot made a quick slicing motion across his neck. "Do not tell her what we're doing," he growled through his teeth.

"Hey, Sophie, hold up one sec, 'kay?" Hardison took the phone from his ear and cupped his left hand over the speaker. "What? Why?" he whispered. "You know, maybe we could use some help. You walking us into death traps is  _not_  my idea of a smooth sailing job!"

"What, you want to be the one to tell her that we frickin' lost Parker?"

"She and Nate could help us  _find_  Parker."

"Forget it. We are not - "

"We're not what, Eliot? We haven't called them for anything in three months. We left them alone, just like we agreed. But that didn't exactly end in sunshine and daisies, did it?"

Dammit. He'd known this day would come, but he'd hoped to face it with all of the kinks worked out. The last thing Eliot wanted was for Sophie and Nate to feel an obligation to get drawn back into the team's orbit. They had this chance, this incredible chance, to walk away. To marry the person they loved, to buy a house, to have kids… to be normal. To have all the things Eliot knew he'd given up any hope for a long time ago.

But he'd known they wouldn't be able to stay away, not totally. He'd known they'd worry - especially Sophie. He'd put off calling, encouraged Parker and Hardison to do the same. If they could just show "Leverage International" doing its thing with no problems, no reasons for Nate and Sophie to see a need to step in…

Maybe the 75% chance estimate that he could avoid a bullet had been generous. Maybe he couldn't have guaranteed the collective action problem of the soldiers in that room, or the reaction time of the leader. Maybe the situation his Arabic and zero French had walked them into had been more dire than he'd told Hardison or himself.

But admitting that meant admitting that dumb luck and Sophie's call had saved their asses, chalking up the survival of his best friend to  _deus ex machina_. The implications of that reality…

No. He would have been fast enough. He had to be. There existed no alternative. For Hardison, he would always be fast enough. He wasn't ever going to let someone die for his mistakes again.

He looked down at his lap. One of his hands was twitching. With a strong, dark thought, he commanded it to be still.

"Tell her Parker's off comm, but you'll have her call Sophie back."

"How in the hell do you plan - "

"We're going to find Parker, Hardison. Hurry up and get off the damn phone."

Sighing, the hacker removed his hand from the device, speaking back into it. "Hey, Sophie. Sorry about that. We'll… we'll call you back."

_We'll call you back,_  thought Eliot. _When this is done._


	11. Chapter 11

                By the time his fiancée returned to their ill-fated picnic spot, Nate had finished both his and Sophie's glasses of prosecco. He was fondling the bottle, considering how much was left inside and whether or not it would give him an adequate buzz if he polished it off, when Sophie's handbag suddenly flew into his vision like a large, leather projectile and knocked it out of his hand. The vessel tumbled over, spilling fizzing, peach-colored liquid all over one corner of the blanket.

                "Honestly," said Sophie as she stomped over. "Does the whole world think I'm an idiot?"

                He winced. Thirty minutes' worth of her words swimming around his brain, and he still wasn't sure what to say to diffuse her mood. Give him anyone else, and he could always find the perfect way into their head… but not Sophie. It was one of the things that drew him to her - that she made him work for even glimpses into her thinking, always kept him chasing her. There was no one he loved chasing more.

                But then came situations like this, disagreements that blindsided him and from which she wouldn't cool off after a couple of hours. He'd seen that flash in her eyes that meant he'd landed a blow under her sultry, confident veneer, and she didn't simply bounce back from those kinds of invasions.

                Yet, how exactly was he to know what vulnerabilities lay beyond when she barely invited him to see those true, deepest parts of her? The past three months of their engagement had been a haze of happiness; it had seemed that they couldn't get enough of each other. But how much of the _real_ Sophie was he actually getting? Sometimes he wasn't sure he knew - really knew - her at all. She never let down her guard or bothered to tell him what she was really thinking. No, it was always neurolinguistic programming and suggestive looks, like he was some sort of mark.

                She wanted a big, fancy to-do of a wedding? All she had to do was say so. Instead, she'd already cast him as the emotionally-impaired villain. Again.

                But, bringing up Sophie's fear of intimacy at this moment wasn't going to draw her back from the indignant place to which she'd retreated. "Look, Sophie," he began, getting to his feet. As good a place as any to start: with words. "You know I didn't - "

                "Parker's in the bathroom? Really? Do they think I'm that bloody gullible? I taught them everything they know!"

                "Parker's in the… Sophie, what's going on?"

                She stopped at the edge of the blanket, tapping her phone against the palm of her left hand in agitation. "I just had a very interesting conversation with Hardison."

                "Hardison called you?" So, the dam had finally broken. An interesting time for it, and after a longer period than maybe Nate had anticipated, but who was he to complain? Sophie's mind was somewhere else now - somewhere she might actually let him go.

                She shook her head and waved a hand, as if to say, _'Stop asking stupid questions.'_

                He blinked, but then put it together. "… You called Hardison."

                "Well I tried calling everyone else, didn't I? But _no_ , no one wants to talk to Sophie. Nobody cares about Sophie unless they're stuck in the middle of a sodding con!"

                "Sophie."

                "Don't you use that tone with me," she hissed, eyes narrowing. "You're on your own patch of incredibly thin ice."

                Hm. Perhaps it would take more to put her off this wedding thing than he'd thought.

                "Sophie," he tried again. This time, he softened his voice and slowly held up one of his hands. "Tell me what happened."

                She crossed her arms. "So you can tell me that I'm overreacting?"

                "So that I can help. Come on, Soph. We're a team."

                "Interesting choice of words." She looked away from him, but, after a second, spoke again. "Yes, after trying Tara, Parker, and Eliot, I called Hardison. To complain about you, obviously."

                "Obviously," Nate deadpanned.

                "But instead of being in bed, or up playing one of his games, he was in the middle of a con. A con that, apparently, required someone fluent in French. Honestly, I'm almost certain that they're actually _in_ France."

                She recounted all that Hardison had told her, then began to describe her conversation as 'Ms. Delacourt.'

                "This man - Ebrahim, he said his name was, and I'd bet my mother's pearls that he's with the _Milieu_ \- was holding Eliot and Hardison at gunpoint, and he wasn’t shy about telling me so. He knew their first names, if not their last, obviously spoke English as well… He wanted to know why they had come to his neighborhood looking for some man named Gérard Nejem. I really didn't have much to go on at this point, but Hardison had set me up as his employer, so I did my best."

                "And what did you tell him?"

                "That Eliot Spencer and Alec Hardison were working for me, and that I was willing to pay generously for their assured safety and information regarding the whereabouts of Monsieur Nejem."

                "You used their real names?"

                "It probably saved their lives, Nate. That man was going to shoot them like dogs unless I gave him something big and believable. I told him Eliot was my bodyguard. My extremely expensive and valuable bodyguard."

                "And what was Hardison?"

                Sophie's lips puckered a little in thought. "Hm. I suppose I didn't specify his importance." She did the hand-waving bit again, dismissing that line of inquiry. "Obviously they dealt with that. I called them back once they were on the train, and Hardison was just fine."

                "Did he fill you in on the background of the job? You're roped in now."

                "That's exactly it," she said. "He didn't explain anything - practically hung up on me, after a painfully obvious whispered conversation with Eliot. And when I asked about Parker, who, as you've no doubt noticed, wasn't mentioned once in all of this, all he could come up with was that she was in the loo. I mean, really. As if I couldn't tell from his cadence and breathing that he was lying. Has he completely forgotten what I do?"

                Nate mulled over all of this information before saying or asking anything else. He could understand Sophie's agitation. This, the first contact with the new Leverage team in three months, had necessitated Sophie's involvement but offered no explanation. No mention of Parker, either during the con or the train debrief. Knowing Eliot, Hardison, and Parker - and Nate knew them like no one else in the world - that meant only one thing.

                They were in deep trouble.

                He dug his phone out of his blazer's inside pocket. "All right, Sophie, find us a cab."

                "What?"

                "You said they're in France? We can be there in a couple of hours."

                "Now, you hold on just a second, Nathan Ford. Tell me what's going on in your head right now. You can't just go all mysterious Mastermind on me."

                "Obviously something's very wrong," he said, scrolling through his applications. He tapped the one he was looking for. "With Parker."

                "I… yes, I suppose that was my gut feeling, too. But haven't you been saying for three months that they need to learn to sink or swim on their own?"

                "Yes, and now we can clearly see that they've sunk. I was afraid of this." More than that, though, he was afraid it might be his fault.

                It had been Nate's decision to walk away; Sophie had followed his lead and the all-important romantic gesture. He had been the one to draw Hardison into his plans to steal the Black Book. But he'd refused to reach out since he and Sophie had left, maintained that it would hurt the integrity and confidence of the team to check up on them like a helicopter parent.

                But this secrecy, Parker's absence, Eliot and Hardison almost dead at the hands of French mobsters?

                Maybe he'd been too quick to leave them alone in the deep end.

                No, he'd _absolutely_ been too quick about it. Too myopic. Too focused on what _he_ wanted.

                And now this.

                _Damn it all._

                When he glanced up, he found Sophie staring at him with a mix of surprise and - what was that? - satisfaction, maybe? "What?" he asked.

                "Nothing," she said, though the sly smile tilting her mouth meant the complete opposite. "I'll hail a cab." The smile growing, she took a few steps toward him and bent over to pick up her discarded handbag. When she straightened, though, her expression had faltered slightly. "Wait a moment. We're almost certain they're in France, but the _Milieu_ operate out of _banlieues_ in many major cities. How are we going to find them?"

                It was Nate's turn to smirk as he turned his phone's display toward her.

                She gazed at it for a long three count, then fixed him with a decidedly less-satisfied look. "Really? _Really?_ You complete and utter control freak."

                He shrugged. "I can see that you're secretly very pleased and, dare I say… grateful?"

                "Ugh." She rolled her eyes. "Don't press your luck. I wouldn't get too superior right now, if I were you. Are those their - "

                "Earbuds. Yeah."

                "And you've had this the whole time? You've been checking up on them and let me worry myself to death in silence?"

                His smirk grew. He really should be trying harder to restrain it, but he couldn't help it. "Scout's honor, this is the first time I've used it." Even though he'd practically had to hide the phone from himself to keep it that way. "Oh, and by the way, I _knew_ you were trying to con me into going to see them."

                She narrowed her gaze, probably completely unaware of how sexy he found her when she did that. "But they're not moving. Eliot and Hardison are on a train right now."

                "Which is only further proof that whatever is going on has to do with Parker, because they weren't using their comms. I guarantee you, though, that the earbuds are back with Hardison's things."

                Sophie sighed, shaking her head in evident exasperation. Then, she abruptly threw her arms about his neck, burying her face in his shoulder. "Thank you," she murmured. "Thank you, you utterly pompous arse with a god complex."

                Taken aback, Nate stiffened, but after a second relaxed, embracing her gently around the waist. "I love you, Sophie Devereaux. You know that, don't you?"

                The squeeze of her arms tightened. "Of course I do. But we… you know we have to talk about this."

                It didn't take a mastermind to know what she meant by 'this,' but at least now he'd have a little more time to figure out exactly what to say.

                "Yeah. I know."

                She slowly extricated herself from his hold and swiped away what might have been a tear on one cheek. "All right," she said. "Well, we'd better get going, then."

                He nodded, practically able feel the gears of his mind beginning to turn. "Let's go steal the team."


	12. Chapter 12

                "So," said Dave as he handed over a cup of vending machine coffee. "Morgan says you're one of her assets."

                Parker took the coffee gingerly, her expression schooled into what she hoped was the very picture of anxious innocence. Should she say something to that? He sounded a little skeptical.

                Fortunately, Charlotte/Morgan - no, just Morgan. That was definitely her real name, not her CIA name - saved Parker from having to answer Dave's leading conversation starter. "Give the girl some space, Dave," she said, crossing her arms. "You saw how she spooked out there. Why don't we allow her a second to get herself together. I'll take your questions."

                "All right, fine," said Dave, turning his attention away from Parker and fixing Morgan with an exasperated look. "Why don't we start with where the hell you've been for a week. Honestly, Mo, I thought you were dead. When we heard what happened to Nejem - you know about that, don't you?"

                "Know about it? Dave, that's why I'm here."

                Peering over the rim of her paper cup as she blew on the steaming liquid inside, Parker watched the other woman and briefly noted how she'd diverted Dave's attention, buying time again. Now that she knew what to look for, Parker could identify Morgan doing all sorts of Sophie-style grifter things, even in seemingly innocent conversation and gestures: a touch here, a word there, a smile, open body language - everything in complete contrast to her desperation of only a minute ago, when she'd pleaded with Parker to follow her lead so that they could get out of this embassy without getting detained for the indefinite future. And those were just the things that Parker could pick up on, having been around Sophie for so long. If this was what Morgan did for a living… well, even her breathing was probably calculated.

                Grifters were weird like that.

                And working for the CIA _totally_ counted as grifting.

                _You can rename Baby Joy/Rage to "Baby Feels-A-Lot," but that doesn’t make him any less angry,_ Parker mused as she finally took a sip of the coffee. Despite all of her blowing, the liquid still managed to sear off the tip of her tongue. _Ow! What did they make this with, lava?_

                Dave sat down on the edge of his desk, his backside displacing a jumble of papers. His entire office was a bit of a pig sty. "I suppose you're going to tell me what that means? And why whatever you were doing meant you couldn't at least call? I almost sent a Seal team out to look for your body."

                Morgan rolled her eyes. "Really, with the melodrama?"

                "Melodrama? Mo, you've been out of pocket for six days. _Six days_. That's a lifetime in intelligence."

                "Don't I know it. Look at what I'm wearing. Can you imagine walking around in this getup for six days?"

                "I'm serious, Mo. According to protocol, I should have had some contact with you by now."

                Parker caught a little gleam in Morgan's eye, as if she were  _trying_ to get Dave riled up. Or at least enjoying it somewhat. The stocky man had begun to breathe a little heavily, and sweat spots were spreading under his arms.

                "I know what the protocol is," she said. "But I had to make a split-second decision. Once I heard that Nejem's apartment had been bombed, I knew that I had a very limited window in which to get to the people closest to him before the Libyans. And if the Libyans had been watching him closely enough to figure out that he'd flipped and betrayed them, they knew my face, too. I figured it would be safest for me to lay low for a while, especially until I found Brigitte." She gestured to Parker, as if to direct the conversation toward her now.

                Dave didn't take the bait. "You couldn't use the dead drop? Send up a freaking smoke signal?"

                "Really, Dave, it touches my heart to know you were so worried about me." Something in Morgan's tone, however, suggested that she wasn't so much 'touched' as vaguely amused. "But, as you can see, I'm fine. All in one piece, and with a valuable asset. This is Brigitte Denis. She was Gérard Nejem's girlfriend."

                Dave's mouth was already open, like he'd been planning to say something else, but he closed it at the word "girlfriend." He looked at Parker as if seeing her for the first time.

                "Wait a second," he said. "She was what now?"

                "Brigitte had been seeing Gérard for almost a year. Come on, Dave, I must have mentioned her like five times in our debriefings. Remember? He went on and on about her madeleines?"

                Dave blinked and frowned. He looked at his shoes. "Well I… okay, yeah, I guess that sounds familiar. But she wasn’t in any of our files…"

                "That's because Nejem kept her from the Libyans, too. Does she look like the kind of girl they would have approved of him dating? Honestly, Dave, we talked about her right before I went underground."

                Parker knew that this all had to be a lie to throw Dave off, but Morgan's delivery was so convincing that she couldn't blame the guy for the pained, confused look on his face.

                "I… well… Okay, in my defense, I thought you were dead. So, sorry if I'm going around forgetting things." Dave tugged at his collar. "Sheesh, you'd think they'd invest in better air conditioning around here."

                Parker raised an eyebrow. The room felt fine; it might have even been on the cool side. Then she realized that Morgan had done that to Dave, made him overheat somehow with the conversation.

                _Oh yeah. Definitely a grifter._

                The poor guy looked relieved when a knock came at the door. "Excuse me," he said and held up a finger. Then he ducked out of the office so quickly that it took Parker a second to process the fact that she and Morgan were alone again.

                Morgan blew out a breath from between pursed lips, but then she flashed Parker a thumbs-up. "You're doing great. Keep it up, and we might just get out of this."

                Well, it was good that one of them thought this was going well. Parker's idea of 'getting out of this' would have involved a lot more running, lock-picking, and wall-scaling. Definitely a lot less talking. It occurred to her, though, that _she_ hadn't had to do any of the actual talking.

                " _I_ didn't actually do anything," she said with a slight frown.

                "But you didn't need to. You're following my lead. Nice job."

                Parker took another sip of her coffee, since it had finally cooled to the point where it didn't burn off all her taste buds, and said, "Why'd you push all his buttons?"

                "Hm?"

                "You did that on purpose, right? Made him all fluster-y."

                A smile flickered over Morgan's face. "Huh. You caught that?"

                Parker shrugged. "I know a few grifters."

                That made the other woman snort out a laugh. "Right," she said. "I almost forgot that you've worked with some of the biggest names in the business." She trailed off, then added as an afterthought, "But I'm not a grifter."

                _Typical government lackey denial. Adorable._

                "So? Why'd you do it?" pressed Parker.

                Morgan glanced at the door like she might be expecting Dave to burst back in at any moment, but it stayed shut. "Well, the more irritated he is with me, the less he's actually thinking about you," she said. "We don't have any hard evidence to back up our story, and your little bolting episode in the lobby turned some heads. Dave's not a field guy - as you can tell, he's no whiz at keeping his cool - but he _is_ my handler, and at some point he's going to think to ask why I was in the passport line, or why you were standing by yourself. So, I'm throwing up as much smoke as I can. And, as a bonus, it's kind of hilarious. Did you see him sweat? He's like an amphibian."

                "Ha!" The single-syllable laugh erupted from Parker's throat before she could seriously consider whether or not she should be laughing at a CIA agent's jokes.

                _Darn it._ This had been a lot easier when Morgan had been nice, awkward Charlotte Dahl, instead.

                The door opened again, and Dave poked just his head into the room. "Sorry, I'm being summoned to a conference call, but the security guys wanted me to tell you that it'll just be about ten more minutes, and then you can leave, Miss Denis. They finished going over the security footage, and now they're just running a standard catalog."

                Morgan sat up straighter in her chair. "A catalog? What for? They saw the footage. Obviously she didn't plant a bomb or anything."

                Dave smirked. "Well, Mo, maybe you'll think twice next time before pissing off embassy personnel with your sarcasm. I expect the guys manning the front entrance are dragging their feet on purpose."

                Parker's lip curled into a sneer as she remembered the  man who'd mercilessly pressed her skull into the tiles of the lobby floor. He hadn't sounded too pleased when Morgan had demanded that he let Parker go. Whatever a 'catalog' was, it wouldn't be hard to imagine him being behind it.

                "How thoughtful of them," muttered Morgan. "I'll see Brigitte out when they're done."

                "Yes, and then you'll be right back here," said Dave, his expression losing its levity. "You've got some serious debriefing to do."

                "Dave, come on. Don't make me come back to this dump. It smells like old Cheetos."

                Acting as if he hadn't heard her, Dave continued, "See you back here in an hour. Oh, and, Miss Denis, I'm sure we'll meet again very soon," and ducked back out.

                He hadn't been gone again for more than two seconds before Morgan leapt to her feet. "Crap! Crapcrapcrap! Okay, that's it. We have to get you out of here."

                Parker blinked. "What? I thought that was what we were doing. And you said - "

                "I know. I said it was going well. But that was before I knew they'd be running a catalog on you."

                "What does that even - "

                "It's short for running your picture through the facial recognition catalog. Just… damn."

                "Oh." That changed everything. Every United States embassy had access to the databases of CIA, FBI, Interpol… Parker's face - associated with her true identity - would light up like the Tokyo skyline. And then she really would be arrested, no take-backs.

                "Okay," said Morgan, moving toward the door. "You've got to go. Take a right down this hallway, and there's an emergency exit. You can blend onto the street, catch a cab - disappear. I'll get to the security office and distract them as long as I can. Give you a head start."

                "But I - "

                "Parker. You have nine minutes now, tops!"

                Parker glanced down at the cup of coffee in her hand. It was still warm. They'd hardly been in this office for fifteen minutes, but here, again, something had changed so suddenly. She practically had whiplash from all that had happened in this embassy. In the span of a breath, she was back to running, just like in the lobby. On her own. Every woman for herself.

                Something else had changed in those fifteen minutes, too. In the last few seconds, even.

                "No."

                Morgan's eyes widened as she simultaneously frowned. The resulting look was, what? Incredulity. Yeah, that was a good word for it. "Parker, what the - did you hear me? They are _going to figure out who you are_. Stop messing around and get out of here!"

                "They won't believe that you didn't know who I was."

                "Yeah, fine, whatever. I'll deal with it. _Go._ "

                That. That was what had changed.

                Fifteen minutes ago, Morgan had been a traitor and an unknown. Parker had decided that, while maybe she couldn't trust this CIA person as far as she could throw her, she could at least let her talk their way out of a jam. Anything to get out, and then Parker would call the boys, apologize, and ditch Paris ASAP.

                But, as of thirty seconds ago, "traitor" wasn't the word Parker would have used anymore.

                "What about McMaster? You need help."

                Morgan's jaw went slightly slack, as if she couldn't believe what she was hearing. "Forget McMaster! It was stupid of me to drag you into this in the first place."

                Those were words Parker could trust.

                "You yourself said that if he figures out what you're trying to prove, you'll end up in indefinite CIA detention." Parker crossed her arms. "That's what you said, right?"

                "Parker, you have eight minutes. Please."

                Eight minutes. Parker considered the timing, and then sized it up next to a sudden, brilliant idea. "Oh yeah," she said. "Totally doable."

                "What? Parker - "

                "I'm going to need a smartphone."

                "But you - "

                Parker held up her right hand and snapped it shut like Pac-Man chowing down on a ghost. It was a gesture she had seen Sophie use to shut people up. Surprisingly, and much to her delight, it worked. Morgan looked like she might choke on the rest of her sentence.

                "Seven minutes, forty seconds," said the thief with a little smirk. "I've got this. Trust me. We're walking out of here. Together."


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry there wasn't a chapter last week; I took it off for Easter. Hope I make it up to you with this chapter, though! Have a great weekend!

                "Okay," said Hardison as they stepped off the train at Saint-Lazare Station. He checked his phone again. "We want the M Fourteen. Going toward… Olympiades. So I think we need to go down that escalator over there for the metro."

                Eliot's eyes followed Hardison's extended finger. "You mean the escalator we came up this morning."

                "Hey, can the sass. I get turned around in places like this."

                "And by 'places like this' you mean airports and train stations?"

                Hardison really wasn't in the mood for banter. He glowered. "What part of 'can the sass' did you have trouble with?" Adjusting his backpack, and without waiting to see if Eliot followed, he headed for the escalator.

                If things had been a little tenuous between him and Eliot when they'd first arrived in Paris, then the trip to the _banlieue_ ; almost getting murdered in the back room of a dingy bar; and Eliot's bull-nosed insistence that they flat-out lie to Sophie after she'd saved their lives hadn't brought improvement. In fact, as one might expect, the tension had worsened with each speedbump. The remainder of the train ride, after Hardison had hung up with Sophie, had been spent in uncomfortable silence, and at this point the air between them was about the temperature of the waters off of Greenland.

                He knew it was partially his own fault, because he couldn't keep the frustration off his face anymore. But why was he even frustrated in the first place?

                Maybe because Eliot Spencer seemed to have taken World's-Most-Infuriating-Friend pills.

                In that moment, when Eliot had demanded with all the sensitivity of a rabid dog that they not let on to Nate and Sophie what they were dealing with in trying to find Parker, Hardison had actually considered blurting out the truth. Because they _needed_ help. All that their little trip to the suburbs had really gotten them was confirmation that Gérard Nejem was a real person, and that he had, in fact, hung out on a regular basis with certain shady figures among the Libyan refugee population. But they'd known all that from his files. _That_ hadn't been worth the field trip and 750,000 Euro that he'd have to track down and transfer back before the potential mark who he'd borrowed it from got wise to its absence.

                After all they'd gone through since their plane touched down, there were really only two pieces of information that they had now that they didn't have before, and neither of them was particularly helpful in accomplishing their actual objective - finding Parker. The first piece was that some American man had also been observed making intermittent visits to the refugee camp, though whether this man was the Carson McMaster guy that Charlotte Dahl/Morgan Gray had told them about wasn't clear. The second was that Dahl/Gray herself, or anyone matching her description, had _not_ been seen hanging around.

                So, yes, they knew something that they hadn't known before, but as far as locating Parker went, all they knew was that she sure as hell wasn't in that _banlieue._

                He'd come so, so close to telling Sophie all of that, to unloading his frustration and his fear and begging -- yes, begging -- for her help. What would Eliot have done then? Strangled him in front of a train car full of witnesses?

                But he hadn't told her anything. Probably because a small part of him still hoped they could pull this off and stay a team. And an even bigger part of him was a big, fat coward.

                At the bottom of the escalator, Hardison stepped off to one side and finally glanced around for Eliot. The hitter was a few steps up, staring into space with his arms crossed. A harried-looking woman behind him made a move like she might try to duck around him, but his stance was so wide and solid that there wasn't any room for her to go anywhere. She glared at his back until they reached the lower level.

                "M Fourteen's over there," Hardison mumbled.

                Eliot just gave a little, uninterested grunt.

                God help Parker if this was how things were going to be from now on.

                They purchased tickets from a kiosk and found their platform without exchanging another word. In fact, it was Hardison's phone that broke the silence.

                _'I'm a lumberjack, and I'm okay - "_

                With the instantaneous speed of Mr. Miyagi trapping a fly with chopsticks, Eliot snatched the singing gadget from Hardison's hand before he could answer.

                Hardison immediately tried to grab it back. "Hey! What the hell, man?"

                "If I hear that frickin' song one more time - "

                "It's _hilarious_. Seriously, you have absolutely zero - "

                " - I'm gonna crush this thing, you hear me?"

                "Eliot, give me my damn phone."

                The hitter swiped his finger to cut off the incoming call. "No. You told Sophie _we'd_ be in touch."

                "Yeah. And that number wasn't Sophie's, genius."

                "Well who the hell else would be calling you?"

                They glowered at each other for a beat. Then, at the same time, it dawned on them, and they both almost shouted, "Parker!"

                Hardison gesticulated with his hand. "Gimme the phone."

                "Wait, I've got it - "

                "Eliot! GIVE IT TO ME!"

                "Fine," muttered Eliot. Even though he tossed the phone underhanded, it still hit Hardison in the chest like a baseball off the bat.

                Hardison managed to catch it, but winced. "Ow!"

                "Oh, suck it up. You'll live. Hit redial, already!"

                "I am going as fast as I can, Eliot!" Hardison fumbled the phone to get it right-side-up and practically jabbed the screen for the redial function. "Come on, come on… pick up… "

                The other end rang only once before Parker's voice answered, "Hardison?"

                It was the sweetest sound he'd ever heard.

                "Parker?" His knees nearly buckled beneath him from relief as his lips formed her name. He hadn't realized until this very second just how worried he'd been that he'd never speak to her again. "Oh my god," he managed. "You're okay. Wait, you're okay, right?"

                "Yeah, of course. Why didn't you pick - nope, forget it. Later. I need your - "

                "Parker, where are you?"

                "In Paris, of course. I left you a - "

                "Yeah, I know you're in Paris. _Where_ in Paris? We're coming to get you."

                "No, Hardison, I really don't have  - "

                "We're at the Saint Lazare station - "

                "CGI YODA KICKS PUPPET  YODA'S ASS!"

                Hardison's next words died in his throat with a strangled squeak.

                "Whew!" said Parker, as chipper as if she'd just finished base jumping instead of desecrating a science fiction icon. "You sure can gab." She laughed, and even though Hardison's horror at her heresy continued to render him speechless, he felt something flip in his stomach at hearing that slightly-deranged, adorable cackle. "Listening now? Good. No time to explain - we've got… six minutes - but I need you to remotely hack a facial recognition database through this phone, okay?"

                "Uh… " Finally his voice returned. "You need what, now?"

                "Can you do that? Hack a facial recognition program?" She paused, just for a breath, and continued more softly, "They're running my face, Alec."

                "Who? Who's running your face?"

                "What?" Eliot said suddenly. "Hardison, what the hell's going on? Put her on speaker."

                Too worried to argue, Hardison did so, just in time for Parker to say, "The American embassy. Seriously, Hardison, I need your help like right now."

                The American embassy? What in the world was she doing there? Unless…

                "Parker," he said. "Have you been arrested?"

                She sighed. "Not yet. But in five and a half minutes… you get the picture."

                Hardison shoved the phone at Eliot - "Hold this!" - and practically tore the backpack off his shoulder. People on the platform shot him bizarre looks as he removed his netbook from the laptop sleeve like a wild person and sprinted for the nearest bench. "Eliot, get over here!"

                Eliot ran over, too, but he didn't sit down on the bench like Hardison. Instead, he stood next to it, holding out the phone.

                "Okay, Parker" said Hardison as the computer booted out of sleep mode. "Are you listening? I need you to find a cable to plug the phone you're using into a computer on the embassy's network."

                "Cable… plug it in. Okay. Uh… "

                "Is it a smartphone?"

                "Yes."

                "iPhone?"

                "No."

                "All right, then you need a mini USB cable. I'd do it over wi-fi, but every U.S. embassy has wireless encryption that I can't crack on a moment's notice. We'll have to do this hardwired."

                Parker's voice dropped in volume for a moment, like she was whispering to someone, then she said, normally, "Okay. I'll be right back. I'll have to go steal a cord from somebody. Morgan's going to answer all your techie questions, though, okay? Be back in a sec!" Parker's end of the call rustled--the phone changing hands.

                Holy crap. In the midst of his relief, Hardison had totally forgotten about Morgan Gray. The CIA agent. The liar.

                "… Gray," growled Eliot with such venom that even Hardison wanted to scoot a few inches farther away from him.

                "Well, I'll admit," said a dry, female voice after a second, "I've never heard my name said quite so menacingly."

                Hardison struggled for a moment with the urge to _laugh_. But that was probably the hysterics bubbling up in him.

                "Parker knows your real name," said Eliot.

                "So do you, apparently. You guys are regular pinball wizards."

                Hardison peered up at the hitter's face, which was contorting in rage.

                "If anything happens to her - "

                "Slow down there, cowboy. Parker knows I'm CIA. And, if you know my real name, I'm sure you're aware of that, too. As I already told her, I fully expect for you to murder me later. But I don't have time for death threats right this second. We've got just under five minutes to fool this software and get Parker out of here in one piece. Hardison? You there?"

                "Yeah," he said, avoiding Eliot's scathing glare.

                "Okay, I'm in an office, and I've got access to a desktop… circa 2010, maybe? When Parker gets back, what do we need to do?"

                Hardison had begun frantically typing by this point. "Just plug the phone in. I'll text you an attachment, and it'll start an automatic download of my worm."

                "Do you need to know anything else? What room the software's being run in? Access codes?"

                "No, the worm knows what to do. It'll freeze the network and give Parker a window."

                "Wait, wait, wait. No. That won't work."

                "Well, why the hell not?"

                "Got it!" came Parker's voice and the closing of a door. Their phone must have been on speaker, too; it was picking up more ambient noise. "What's wrong? Why are you making that face?"

                "Gray doesn't want Hardison to do his frickin' job, that's what," said Eliot.

                The two women murmured to each other for a moment.

                "No," said Parker. "No freezing worms. They can't think Morgan had anything to do with this."

                Eliot erupted. "WHAT? Parker, she's CIA. She sat in the brew pub and lied to us. Get yourself out of there."

                Gray cleared her throat. "Yeah… So, I'm standing right here..."

                "Ask me if I give a flying - "

                "Parker," said Hardison before Eliot could overheat. This day just kept getting better and better. "A general worm is all I've got on hand right now. I can't be more precise without writing an entirely new program."

                Gray sighed heavily enough for their phone's mic to pick it up. "Look, Parker, maybe you should just go, okay? You tried, and I really appreciate it, but - "

                "Hardison," said Parker. Her calm voice cut through Morgan Gray's like a razor. "We have four minutes. Please."

                "Four minutes? Babe, I can't - "

                "For me. For me you can, right?"

                Hardison hadn't wanted to admit it, but the stress of the last three months had strained more than just the team's dynamic and their ability to pull off cons. It had hurt his and Parker's relationship, too. When he'd held her back in that hotel room in Seattle, it had been the first time they'd been that close in weeks. He'd been so focused on not dropping the ball on the job… He'd let her slip through his fingers. What if something had happened to her in Paris? What if she hadn't ever been on the other end of this phone call?

                His chest hurt like someone had reached in to squeeze his heart.

                Yes. God, yes. For her, he'd do anything.

                "Plug the phone in, Mama. I got you."

 

* * *

 

                Morgan took slow, deep breaths to keep her pulse in check. This wasn't nearly the most stressful or life-threatening situation she'd ever been in, but something about it _not_ being for the United States government was shooting adrenaline through her bloodstream.

                Parker smiled as Alec Hardison's voice said, distorted as if coming from inside a tin can, "Plug the phone in, Mama. I got you."

                Hell if that wasn't the sweetest thing Morgan had heard in months. She watched Parker's cheeks take on a faint tint of pink.

                "Plugging in now," said the thief. She stuck one end of the cord into the phone and the other into the computer. "Anything else?"

                "Just gimme a sec. I've gotta think."

                Morgan glanced at the clock hanging above Dave's office door. How had the last three minutes managed to seem like both hours and seconds at the same time?

                _Three and a half minutes left. Good lord. With a smartphone._

                Maybe indefinite CIA detention wouldn't be _so_ bad. She'd get to see a Black Site… that would be interesting. Stuff like that was always need-to-know. According to rumors, there was one in Brazil…

                _Oh good, I've already resigned myself to the perks of being held in a cinder block compound in the middle of the rainforest. In a real good place, aren't you, Mo?_

                She watched the clock's second hand inch its way around 360 degrees. Then again. She squeezed her fists, still trying to control her breathing. With every tick, she fully expected a gaggle of security guards to break down the door and throw a bag over hers and Parker's heads.

                Parker perched on the edge of Dave's desk, drumming a rhythm with her fingertips. Her lips quirked to one side in a faint half-smile. Cool as a cucumber.

                Up until this point, Morgan had been fully willing to give Parker the benefit of the doubt over that "loose cannon" business she'd read about in the thief's file.

                But there was definitely something wrong with her.

                "Okay!" The sudden burst of sound from the phone's speaker made Morgan jump. It was Hardison. "Click the attachment I just sent you. Right now!"

                Parker peered at the screen and poked it a couple of times. The device beeped.

                "Uh, is that a good beeping, or a bad beeping?" asked Parker.

                There was silence on the other end of the line for about three seconds. Then Alec Hardison started laughing. Hysterically.

                "Hell yes!" he whooped. "Hell. YES!"

                Eliot Spencer swore with extreme creativity.

                "Haha!" Parker's face lit up. And then she was laughing, too, bouncing up and down on her toes like she'd just been given a trip to Disney World.

                Morgan glanced at the phone, then back at Parker. It occurred to her that maybe it wasn't just the team's thief who was a little bit wack-a-doo. "I'll take that as… it was a good beep."

                No one ever burst into the office, but not a minute later, someone knocked on the door to let them know that Brigitte Denis was free to go. Parker unplugged the phone and removed the cord, pocketing the former after a quick goodbye to Hardison but replacing the latter in another office three doors down as they headed back to the lobby. No one gave them a second glance as they made their way through the hallway. Leaving the building, only the most gung-ho guard, the one who'd been the last to let Parker up off the floor, so much as narrowed his eyes.

                Parker smiled up at the sky as they emerged from the embassy and then closed her eyes as if relishing a particularly delicious dessert. "I love Paris."

                Morgan didn't know if she'd ever been so happy to see natural sunlight in her entire life. _Behold, the power of endorphins._

                The thief took a moment, looking perfectly content, before whipping out the phone again. "Hardison texted me the address of where they're staying. Oooh, the Mandarin Oriental. That place is nice!"

                Morgan's elation at the sunshine evaporated. "Ah. Right. Good." She stuck out her right hand. "Well, uh… It was actually very nice to meet you. And I appreciate you getting me out of there, too." In some weird way, it really _had_ been nice to meet Parker. In fact, the woman standing across from her was probably the most likeable human being Morgan had come into contact with in months.

                Parker blinked and stared at Morgan's outstretched hand. "What?"

                "Hm?"

                "Why are we shaking hands?"

                "Well, I was doing this thing where - "

                "Ohhhh. I get it. You think we're saying goodbye."

                Man, this just got weirder and weirder. "Uh… yes. I dragged you into an off-the-books CIA operation, lied to you about who I was - "

                "Kept me from getting arrested… twice."

                Morgan frowned. "Twice? What - "

                "First with the security guards. Then when you said you'd stay behind and give me time to get away."

                "Yeah, but I didn't actually do that second one. I just offered."

                "But you would have."

                "Parker, I - "

                "Fine. Once and a half." Parker giggled under her breath, like that was some kind of private joke. "Take it or leave it."

                Were they really having this conversation?

                "Yeah," said Morgan. "Fine. Once and a half, or whatever."

                "Okay. Cool. Now that that's settled, let's grab the metro."

                "The metro? Where are we - "

                Apparently Parker wasn't going to let anyone finish a sentence today. "To the hotel, of course."

                "But - "

                "You're still the client," said Parker, and her tone made it clear that this wasn't a negotiation. Though how they'd gotten here in the first place, Morgan honestly couldn't say. "And since the boys are here now, we can have a real briefing."

                That conversation played over and over in Morgan's head as they got onto the metro headed toward Rue Saint Honoré and the fashion district, as they took the steps to the street, and as they walked down the boulevard.

                Parker staring at her hand… still being a client… 'once and a half'… What was so funny about that, anyway?

                Spencer and Hardison were waiting in the lobby of the incredibly swank Mandarin Oriental Hotel when they arrived. Parker waved at them. Morgan steeled herself for a murderous tirade from Spencer, a scene she'd already imagined a dozen times.

                But Parker's partners weren't alone.

                "Oh my gosh," whispered Parker. Then, louder, "Oh my gosh!" She literally squealed and took off running across the lobby .

                A man with curly black hair, dressed in a crisp blazer and slacks, stood next to Spencer--who looked, as Morgan _had_ anticipated, like he might wring the neck of the next person who walked by--and hanging on the man's arm was a classically beautiful woman in a sundress. They were engaged in what appeared to be a heated conversation with Hardison until Parker's squeal, at which they both turned around.

                That was when Morgan recognized them, put their faces to the pictures she'd seen in their files.

                A mastermind legend. A world-famous grifter.

                Parker threw her arms around both the man and woman with the force of a freight train, nearly clotheslining them in the process.

                The man made eye contact with Morgan over Parker's shoulder, and the breath went out of her lungs.

                Morgan returned Nathan Ford's gaze, trying to keep her face impassive. But her heartbeat sped up. Ford raised an eyebrow, as if daring her to make a move.

                Why did he look like he already knew who she was? For that matter, why did he look like he already knew all her deepest, darkest secrets?

                Dammit. That was what Nathan Ford did, wasn't it?

                _Looks like their gang's all back together._ Morgan swallowed.

                The infamous group of five, the "Leverage" crew, all here in the flesh. 

                Why was something about that absolutely terrifying?

 


	14. Chapter 14

                Eliot was tuning out Hardison's over-excited chatter when they entered the lobby of the opulent hotel the hacker had chosen. Eliot hadn't bothered to learn the place's name. He did have one of their business cards tucked inside a waterproof sleeve in his back pocket, though, just in case. You couldn't ever be sure when you might escape from the hold of a commandeered river-cruise boat, swim bound and gagged to shore, and need to tell a deaf cab driver where to drop you off.

                Again.

                His eyes slipped over the lobby's minimalist, geometric furniture and the circular sculpture suspended from the ceiling as they headed for the elevator bank. But he stopped mid-step when he saw the check-in desk.

                "I mean, I have _never_ typed that fast in my life," Hardison was saying. "Do you see my hands right now? They're like _still_ shaking from the adren - Eliot? You okay?"

                Part of Eliot's brain vaguely wondered how long this success high of Hardison's was going to last before he got back to looking at Eliot like he'd blown up Lucille (again). But Eliot wasn't paying attention to that part of his brain; his focus was on the man and woman casually leaning on one another and chatting up the hospitality clerk.

                No. No damn way.

                "Aren't they just the cutest?" he heard the woman say, her English lilt wafting across the lobby like a taunting aroma. "We met them in Barcelona. They were honeymooning, we'd just gotten back together…"

                The man undid the front button of his blazer. "We do these couples weekends a couple of times a year," he said. "But we haven't heard from them since we arrived--just wondering if they've checked in."

                No. No, no, no.

                He squeezed his eyes shut. _Calm down, Spencer. It's not them. You're tired, and you're pissed._

                "Eliot?" came Hardison's voice, as if from far away.

                Eliot sucked in a slow, deliberate breath through pursed lips and counted down from five before opening his eyes again.

                But it wasn't any use. Nothing had changed. Nate and Sophie were standing at that desk.

                Nate and Sophie. Here. In Paris.

                Shock, relief, and the ever-present rage descended on Eliot like a pack of ravenous wolves.

                "Eliot? Are you okay?"

                 His fists clenched until he could feel his fingernails cutting into his palms. Blood rushed to his face, spreading its insidious heat beneath his skin. The edges of his vision seemed to darken until he was looking at the specters of Nate and Sophie through a long tunnel.

                How could they possibly be here? Hardison had just talked to Sophie a few hours ago. _Why_ were they here?

                "Eliot? Yoo-hoo. Are you - oh my god. What the - "

                "Darlings!" called Sophie. "There you are!"

                The lobby and its contents seemed to move in slow motion. Eliot's tunnel vision took in Sophie threading her arm through Nate's, tugging him across the high-gloss marble floor. Their strides stretched into infinity. A wide, lipstick-framed smile spread Sophie's cheeks.

                He reached for the nearest chair to steady himself. Was he having a freaking stroke?

                "S-Sophie?" managed Hardison. "Nate! W-what are you guys doing here?"

                "Trying to find you, of course, darling! Don't look so shocked. We're meeting up this weekend, remember?" Sophie flashed her smile back toward the desk and waved to the clerk with her fingertips. Her voice dropped. "Play along, Hardison."

                "Uh… oh, yeah! Been… been waiting for you!"

                "Really? Because you didn't call," said Nate, and looked right at Eliot. His arched eyebrows and those laser-beam eyes silently added, _'For three months.'_ Nate wasn't playing along with anything.

                Eliot's stomach turned over with another emotion. Guilt? It joined the others fighting for supremacy within him.

                _No_ , he snarled at himself. _I gave them what they wanted and what we needed. A clean break._

When he'd poured himself that final beer in the brew pub after the failed job, he'd thought about doing anything to get Nate and Sophie back… to keep the team together. But that had been selfish, a moment of weakness.

                _"Call if you need anything. But you never, never need anything." You said it, Nate, not me._

The rage rose up in his throat, growing big enough to devour every other feeling in its path.

                He finally managed to form words aloud. They came out like the low rumble of a landslide. "Don't you dare put this on me."

                "What was that, Eliot?" said Sophie. She looked between the two of them with half of that smile still plastered on her face.

                Nate hadn't broken eye contact with Eliot since he'd spoken. Eliot found that as he refused to drop it, as well, the shadows in his peripheral vision began to melt away. He found equilibrium in his balance and planted his feet firmly beneath him, drawing his chest up and crossing his arms. The sheer force of his anger was creating order from the chaos. The pack of wolves inside him equaled paralysis… but the victory of an alpha wolf - the rage - held him fast and moved him forward.

                Three months of this… he was dancing on the edge of a volcano. If he wasn't careful, the rage was going to completely consume him.

                Worry about that later.

                Later. Always later. _Later, if you want to survive right now._

                "Nothing," he said to Sophie. He knew Nate had heard what he'd said.

                Hardison's mouth was hanging open slightly. "How the… how did you know we were here? Wait, why _are_ you here?" His voice dropped. "And I mean, for real. That guy at the desk isn't even paying attention to us anymore."

                Sophie raised an eyebrow. When she spoke again, her voice was softer, too. "We're here because I know something is wrong. You lied to me on the phone, Hardison. I don't like being lied to."

                "That's a little pot and kettle business, isn't it?" muttered Hardison, but he dropped his eyes.

                "Where's Parker?" asked Nate.

                Hardison actually looked relieved at the question. What a difference half an hour could make. "She's on her way over here right now, actually."

                "Oh really?" said Nate, clearly not even remotely convinced.

                "I know that she wasn't - " Sophie began, but she cut off when a high-pitched squeal cut through the lobby. She and Nate both turned around to see its source.

                Even if Eliot had been the one with his back to the sound, he wouldn't have needed to turn around to know it had been made by Parker. She had a very distinctive squeal.

                Despite his rage, Eliot almost cracked a smile when the thief bounded toward them, nearly knocking over Nate and Sophie with a bear hug. God, it was good to see her safe. He might still have some choice words for her about disappearing to foreign cities without warning, but at least she was okay.

                But when he saw who Parker had brought along, any urge to smile completely evaporated.

                Morgan Gray was standing just inside the hotel's front door, dressed like the world's most clueless American tourist, complete with bright white tennis shoes and shapeless jeans. She had her weight on one leg and hands in the pockets of her jacket - the very picture of casual - but she didn't make any move to follow Parker's lead. After watching Nate, Sophie, and Parker for a moment, she shifted her weight to the other leg and glanced at Hardison. But she never once looked at Eliot.

                Maybe she was afraid looks could kill.

                _If only._

                "Wow! You're here! I can't believe it!" exclaimed Parker, vibrating with excitement. She couldn't keep her eyes on just Nate or Sophie's face for more than a quarter second, flickering back and forth between them. "Did Hardison and Eliot call you? I actually sort of hoped they would. Is that terrible?"

                What? _That_ had been part of her half-baked plan?

                "No, they didn't," said Nate. "Should they have?"

                Hardison opened his mouth, probably to attempt to salvage what was obviously about to come apart in front of Nate and Sophie, but Parker beat him to the punch to shoot it all to hell.

                "Well, maybe! I did just leave them alone." She grinned. "But for a good reason, trust me. Oh!" She held up a finger and pivoted, pointing at Gray, who still hadn't moved from in front of the door. "Hey! Morgan! Come over here!"

                Gray slowly blinked, and Eliot saw her shoulders rise and fall with a deep breath. She held up a hand. "That's all right," she said. "Take your time."

                Parker waved dismissively. "Oh, stop. Come on. I want you to meet Na - "

                Nate smoothly interjected. "Parker, why don't we keep the name-shouting to a minimum."

                "Who is that?" asked Sophie, but she didn't look to Parker for the answer; she was asking Eliot and Hardison.

                "It's… a long story…" Hardison caged.

                "Which, as I believe I made clear during our conversation earlier, I do actually expect you to tell me."

                "That's Morgan Gray," said Eliot. Somebody had to put an end to this as soon as possible. "She's CIA."

                Sophie's eyes doubled in size. She, and everyone else, even Eliot, looked to Nate. Three months later, and it was still painfully obvious who they all trusted to be in charge.

                The erstwhile mastermind just raised both eyebrows. "Yes," he said. "She is."

                The superiority in that man's tone was enough to make Eliot cast a look around for another floor lamp to smash. Had he actually _missed_ this know-it-all dynamic?

                "Wait, what?" said Hardison. "How could you possibly know that?"

                Nate smirked. "You mean it isn't obvious?"

                "Wha - of course it's not obvious!"

                Parker suddenly mirrored Nate's smug expression, like a mini mastermind. "Ohhh, I get it.  _That's_  why it's obvious, right?"

                Hardison stared at them like they'd slapped him. "That doesn't make even the slightest bit of sense."

                "Wait, wait, yes it does," said Sophie. "Ah, I see it now. Yes. She's too at ease. Far too at ease to be wearing those clothes, for one thing."

                "She's a professional," supplied Nate. "The impassivity of her face when we made eye contact made that quite apparent. And look at her now. Obviously we're talking about her, but she doesn't appear even remotely worried. Overcompensating or detached. Either way? Grifter."

                "Okay, fine," said Hardison. "But how did you get from grifter to CIA?"

                Eliot closed his eyes and mashed his lips together. How had he missed all the signs in Portland and Seattle? If there was anyone to blame for them being here right now, it was him. The moment Gray had put her back to that door and avoided the peephole, he should have taken her out.

                "Her eyes," he said. He didn't open his own to see if the others were looking at him; he could feel the weight of their attention. "She ticks off all the exits at non-random intervals. She makes it look like she's doing something else… when we talked to her in Portland, she used nervous pauses and pretending to think. Now that she doesn't have anything else to disguise it with, she shifts her weight to change her angles. It's standard protocol. A very - "

                "Distinctive pattern," finished Nate.

                Eliot allowed his eyelids to part, but he kept his gaze on the ground, because seeing Nate's smirk grow at that moment would have been trigger enough to put the man in a choke hold.

                "Wanna meet her?" asked Parker cheerfully.

                When finally Eliot did look up, it was to Nate turning around to fix him and Hardison with the world's most patronizing expression. "So," said the mastermind. "These are the kinds of clients Leverage International is taking on these days?"

                "She's not a client," said Eliot and Hardison at the same time.

                "Don't listen to them," said Parker. "She's definitely a client. They're just mad because she didn't tell us who she worked for to begin with. But you guys never would have listened to her if she'd told us!"

                " _You_ never would have listened to her either, Parker," spat Eliot. "When'd she tell you, huh? Once she already had you across the Atlantic?"

                Parker's face darkened, and her jaw set in a way that Eliot hadn't ever seen before. It made her look older. Angrier. Parker was angry. With _him_. "I am perfectly capable of taking care of myself," she murmured, and her voice was steel, all of its normal sunshine gone. "And I trust her. She _is_ our client."

                _"Parker, grow up!"_ He knew she hadn't forgotten, any more than he had.

                "Parker… " began Hardison, but she cut him off.

                "Fine. _My_ client. Help if you want, or don't." She shook her head, and the look she gave Hardison was full of hurt instead of anger. "I thought… never mind."

                Hardison's face fell. He raised a hand like he might reach out to her, but Sophie stepped in between them.

                "Why don't we all go get something to eat," she suggested. The lightness of her voice emphasized the dark turn taken by the conversation. "Continue this somewhere… private?"

                She glanced at Nate, who said, "Yes. That's a great idea."

                "… I don't want to," murmured Parker.

                Nate made a small gesture toward Gray, who still hadn't moved, though she was actively watching them now. "Eh… Parker, you can bring your friend, if you want."

                _Friend? Really, Nate?_ "I don't - "

                "Let's meet Ms. Gray," said Nate right over Eliot's objection.  "Now that everyone knows who everyone else is… perhaps she can fully share her… situation."

                "And we can decide together what to do," said Sophie.

                Three months of exercising self-control; of convincing Parker and Hardison to let Nate and Sophie breathe; of watching everything fall apart to just let them have their new life; and in a matter of minutes, none of mattered. These two stepped back into a potential job like they'd been hovering in the wings the whole time, just waiting for their cue.

                The rage inside of Eliot briefly faltered for a second, overpowered by another sensation like a knife in his ribs. Betrayal.

                _You never really trusted me with them, did you, Nate?_  


	15. Chapter 15

"Wow," said Parker, leading the group down the sidewalk and swinging her arms. Everyone else seemed to be giving her some space. "I actually am kind of starving."

                Morgan abruptly became aware of her own hunger. Neither she nor Parker had eaten anything since grabbing a croissant on their way out of their hostel that morning… which seemed like weeks ago.

                "Yes, well, it sounds as if you've had quite the day," said Sophie Devereaux. "Why don't we find somewhere nice and quiet to eat… get a bottle of wine…"

                Morgan subtly pinched the inside of her forearm. It stung, all right. This was actually happening. She was actually strolling the streets of Paris with the all-star cast of Interpol's-Most-Wanted.

                If she'd ever had the forethought to envision this moment, it would have gone quite a bit differently, with a lot more "taking care of it" and following protocol. More handcuffs, searchlights, Spencer getting dog-piled by guys in riot gear… that kind of thing.

                Less… whatever this was.

                Ten minutes ago, she'd been standing just inside the front door of the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Paris, the kind of place she'd never have been able to afford to stay in a million years. On a government salary? Please.

                According to all the Jason Bourne and Mission Impossible movies, she, as a CIA clandestine officer, should have been able to read lips, and the entire conversation held between the members of the Leverage team while she awkwardly stood there in the hotel entrance should have been a piece of cake for her to understand. But lip-reading - along with a host of other "essentials," like assembling machine guns while blindfolded and bomb defusing 101 - had been conspicuously missing from her curriculum at the Farm. She could, however, read expressions and body language very well. And that was how she knew the invitation for her to join them for dinner was not just Nathan Ford being nice. They were figuring out what to do about her.

                So here they were, just walking. Looking for a restaurant that would "catch their eye," according to Devereaux. A restaurant with a back room perfect for murdering Langley employees, maybe?

                Morgan found herself walking almost abreast with Hardison and deliberately slowed her pace a notch. Ford was just ahead of the hacker, and she definitely wanted to keep as much distance between herself and that man as possible. That first look he'd given her over Parker's shoulder had been only a taste of the discomfort he could instill with just an expression, and while she couldn't be sure how much of that potential was just her extrapolation of everything she'd heard about him, she also wasn't eager to get enough personal experience to be able to tell the difference.

                It wasn't until she was nearly three yards back from Hardison that she thought to look around for Spencer. If there was anything more threatening than being near Ford, it had to be the infamous hitter's murderous gaze on her flank.

                He was lurking slightly behind her and to the right, and he did look pretty murderous. Man, that was unsettling. Was that his default expression? How did Parker and Hardison sleep at night?

                She slowed even more. Better to let him pass.

                She could practically hear her tactics instructor from the Farm: " _Keep the action in front of you. Adjust for advantageous sight-lines."_

There was only one problem: Spencer wasn't passing her. Every little bit she slowed down, he did the same thing, until finally she stopped. So did he. She turned to make eye contact with him, and dangerous energy practically crackled off of the glare he returned.

                "What the _hell_ are y'all doing?" Hardison's voice broke the moment as it drew the attention of them both. The hacker had also stopped, but two storefronts away. "Fighting over who gets to be the emo kid at the back of the class?"

                If Alec Hardison had been Dave, Mo would have volleyed back some flat, sarcastic response. But the last thing she needed right now was to piss off any member of this team more than she already had. Yes, Parker still seemed gung-ho about helping with the problem of Carson McMaster, but whether the others would be so supportive was clearly up for debate. Hence this little outing.

                She forced her lips together and drew them down just a little, a mask of embarrassment. To appease herself, though, she murmured in Turkish, the last language anyone around her would be likely to understand, "Tamam gülün. Ama korunmasız arka senindir." _Sure, laugh it up. But you're the one with the exposed back._

                "Biliyorum. Budala." _I know. He's clueless._

                She couldn't help a little chuckle at the response, but then froze, her eyes darting back to Spencer. He was the one who'd said it.

                Really? Of all the languages in the world, this guy had to speak Turkish.

                Well, she would obviously need to find another way to go about talking to herself. Next time, maybe she'd try Uzbek. Or at least read this guy's file again and cross off the native tongues of every country offering a price for his head.

                Spencer actually looked almost as shocked at his answer as she felt, though he quickly covered it up with the omnipresent scowl she'd now come to expect.

                "Hey," called out Hardison. "You say somethin'?"

                Morgan just shook her head and began walking again, though she watched Spencer out of the corner of her eye. He paused a second longer than she did and also resumed his pace. He stayed a half-step behind her, so he technically had the best view of everything, but somehow Morgan thought it might have been a professional courtesy for him to allow her part of the sightline, too.

                Or maybe he was just keeping her within arm's reach in case he decided to snap her neck.

                They both caught back up to the other four pretty quickly. Morgan was weighing whether she was safer back there with just Spencer or here, in the belly of the beast, when Parker interrupted her thoughts.

                "Amateur," muttered the thief.

                Everyone was silent for a moment, but then Hardison asked, "What?"

                Parker shrugged. "That guy." She pointed at a slim man with scruffy facial hair and a shapeless crochet hat walking about ten feet in front of them. "See that woman with the sunglasses? He just lifted her wallet. It was painful to watch, honestly, but since she's been yelling into her phone, I guess she didn't - "

                Something streaked by Morgan's right shoulder. For a second she thought it might have been a giant pigeon dive-bombing some garbage, but then she realized it was actually Spencer sprinting past. Her eyes caught up with him right as he left his feet to horizontally tackle the aforementioned pickpocket. The grunt that left his form with the contact was almost animal. Both men tumbled to the concrete in a tangle of limbs. By the time they stopped rolling, Morgan realized that the tangle was really  just Spencer pummeling the guy. Over and over.

                No one moved. Morgan, for her part, was too shocked to even blink. She watched Spencer's fists draw back and connect with the pickpocket's jaw with sickening cracks, his legs pinning the man to the ground. She'd heard whispers about this hitter, and she'd read a lot of what the Agency had on him. She'd feared for her life from just that secondhand knowledge. But now, watching him beat someone almost to death… now that fear was tangible. Not a nightmare, anymore, but her own memory.

                _This_ man looked at her with loathing. Good God.

                After what seemed like forever, Ford and Hardison finally sprang into motion. They each grabbed Spencer under an arm and yanked him away from the sprawled, unmoving form of the pickpocket. The hitter thrashed against their combined hold but didn't break free, despite the fact that, from what Morgan knew about him, he could have easily snapped them both like twigs right then. That, in and of itself, was surprising. He only struggled for a couple of seconds, then went still before drawing his legs under him and standing up.

                He shrugged. Both Hardison and Ford released him. "You shouldn't steal from people," he growled at the man on the ground, dusting himself off.

                Bystanders were staring. A police officer rushed over and began yelling at Spencer in French, reaching for a nightstick.

                But Spencer just gazed at the smaller, uniformed man, and said, "Sophie. Tell this guy I just caught him a criminal, would ya?"

                "Eliot… you beat that man to a - "

                "Sophie," said Ford. They exchanged a loaded look.

                "Fine," she said, but she didn't look as if she thought it was at all.

                _Good_ , thought Morgan. _I'm not the only one totally thrown by what just happened._

                Devereaux's uncertainty and shock faded, however, as she began explaining to the policeman in fast, fluent French that the man who Spencer had accosted had stolen a number of wallets on this sidewalk and maybe even a gun - which was why her friend, a UN Peacekeeper on leave, had stepped in. She even stooped over and pulled three or four wallets from the man's jacket, holding them out. One of them, Morgan noticed, she slipped into her purse with impressive misdirection.

                Morgan felt one of her eyebrows creeping up and quickly stopped it. Still, she did have to marvel at Devereaux's ease under pressure. The lie flowed out of her like water from a pitcher. Fluid, precise, mesmerizing. Every inch of her was involved in the story, and it was masterful to watch. Wow. This woman really knew what she was doing.

                Not that professional grifting was worth admiring or anything.

                Morgan shifted her attention to Parker, who was the only person besides herself to have not moved at this point. The thief had her arms crossed and was watching Spencer with an unreadable expression.

                An unexpected pang cut through Morgan's chest. She didn't know much about Ford and Devereaux, but back in Portland and Seattle she'd been able to tell that Parker, Hardison, and Spencer were more than just colleagues; they were friends. But, though Morgan hadn't directly witnessed either of the instances, she knew that Parker and Spencer had now had not just one, but two interactions that had left Parker a little lost. It was clear that Parker didn't know how to act around her team after the tense conversation at the hotel, just as she'd been a bit cagey after her meeting with Hardison and Spencer in the Portland brew pub's kitchen.

                _Because of me_ , thought Morgan. _None of this would be happening if I'd just dealt with this on my own._

                Then again, if she'd tried to deal with it all herself, she never would had succeeded. Even with this entire motley band of criminals on her side, the prospect of exposing Carson McMaster's treachery, especially before something in Paris blew up, seemed like an incredible long-shot.

                Was it worth it?

                She watched Devereaux shake hands with the police officer and pat him on the back as if they'd been friends for decades. The officer turned to shake Spencer's hand as well. Surprisingly, Spencer accepted the gesture without unleashing any more violence.  

                Morgan was confident in her ability to do her job. Working for the Clandestine Services branch of the Agency required her to take on any number of roles in a given week. Usually those roles required her to blend in, so she was very good at not calling attention to herself. Though, if it meant persuasion, she could do that, too; she had more than a hundred flipped intelligence assets on record since her first assignment to prove it.

                But Sophie Devereaux… Morgan now believed every single word in that woman's file. Frankly, the file didn't even begin to cover it. What Devereaux had was more than a skill. It was like a superpower.

                So, now Morgan had witnessed Parker thieving (if pilfering a phone and a USB cable even counted for someone like her), Hardison hacking, Spencer hitting, and Devereaux grifting. As for Ford… she wasn't sure she wanted to see him in his element after all.

 

* * *

 

                Devereaux ended up making an executive decision about the restaurant where they ate, since no one else on her team seemed to have a strong opinion one way or another. The establishment she chose had a tiny entrance on the street, but opened into a much larger interior, part of which was essentially cordoned off by paper screens. After a quick chat with the maître-D, Devereaux secured the area behind the screens for their party of six and ensured that no other patrons would be seated in the vicinity. Not that there was much chance of that: Parisians wouldn't start having dinner until much later in the evening. The only competition their dinner party was likely to encounter was tourists, and Devereaux appeared to have selected this place for its distinct lack of curb appeal to hungry Americans.

                Devereaux hadn't been kidding about the bottle of wine - in fact, she actually ordered three, with Ford apparently getting one to himself. But even with the obvious ploy to loosen everyone up with alcohol, the grifter failed to distract anyone with small talk. After a few softball 'How was your day?'-type questions met by single-syllable answers, she seemed to give up trying to ease the obvious tension at the table. The most anyone else spoke was ordering their food.

                As the waiter retreated, however, Ford rested his clasped hands on the table, leaned forward, and fixed his laser-like focus on Morgan.

                _And here we go._

                "So," he said. "Ms. Gray, is it? Maybe you'd like to explain what it is you'd like this team to do for you."

                Morgan inhaled slowly through her nose, allowing a beat. Parker, seated on her left at the circular table, gave her a little nudge and what was probably meant to be an encouraging smile.

                _All right._ Morgan had been thinking about how to approach this from the minute Parker had rushed forward to hug Ford and Devereaux at the hotel, and she'd decided to start at the beginning. Parker, Hardison, and Spencer all knew that she was with the CIA, so it didn't make sense to do anything but tell the truth at this point. In fact, right now, with Nathan Ford eyeing her with unconcealed skepticism, the truth was probably the only thing she had going for her.

                Keeping her voice even and her face open, carefully dividing eye contact between Devereaux and Ford, she told them everything, starting with the day she'd met Gérard Nejem in Avignon. It didn't take more than five minutes - she was honest yet efficient with the details - but each second with the weight of five intense gazes on her felt much longer.

                When she came to the part about asking the younger three members of the team for help in Portland, Parker jumped in to pick up the story thread.

                "So she told us her name was Charlotte Dahl, but she _had to_ , since we never would have talked to her if she'd come right out and told us she was CIA, right? And Eliot and Hardison were all, 'No, no more clients,' so to convince them, I decided we should just come ahead to Paris and let them follow us."

                Spencer, sitting with his back to the corner - more advantageous sightlines - glared at the surface of the table.

                "Then I nearly got arrested at the embassy," Parker continued, "but Morgan talked the guards into letting me go, and then she convinced her handler that I was like Nejem-whatshisface's girlfriend and an intelligence asset, and then we called Hardison - "

                "Because they were running her through facial recognition, Nate," interrupted the hacker. "Parker nearly got busted because of this - "

                Ford waved a hand as if to shut them both up. "Guys. I'd like to hear from Ms. Gray, please."

                Parker frowned. "But, Nate, I'm trying to tell you that she - "

                "Parker," murmured Devereaux. She reached across the table to touch the thief's hand, shaking her head.

                "What exactly would you like to hear from me?" Morgan asked slowly.

                Ford was smiling, but it didn't touch his eyes, and his voice when he spoke again had dropped in both volume and pitch. "Well, for starters, I'd like to hear why, exactly, you thought it was the right choice to come to people like us with this problem of yours… if it even is your problem and not some elaborate fabrication meant to entrap them."

                Morgan raised an eyebrow. "Entrap them? Mr. Ford, please extend the professional courtesy of not patronizing me."

                "Professional courtesy? Why, exactly, would I owe you that?"

                "How about one damn good liar to another?" He wanted honesty? Maybe upping the ante a little bit would knock him down a peg.

                Ford just smirked. "You see my problem, then. You're a liar. It's what you do."

                "But look where that got me," said Morgan. "Your hacker and your hitter want me strung up in the streets. Would I really risk sharing a hospital room with that unfortunate pickpocket we met earlier by lying _again_?" She reached for a piece of bread from the basket in the middle of the table and tore a piece from it to pop in her mouth. Chewing it allowed a moment for them to hopefully mull over what she'd said. When she spoke again, she made sure to remove some of the sarcasm from her voice. "Mr. Ford, I have nothing but circumstantial evidence to try and expose a longstanding station chief employed by the most bureaucratic, inbred intelligence agency in the world. McMaster is well-liked here, but more importantly, they love him in DC. I've been in Paris about five minutes. You know how these things work."

                "Indefinite detention," whispered Parker. Everyone glanced at her, but then all eyes were back on Ford.

                "Sure," said the infamous criminal and/or honest mastermind, depending on whose testimony you trusted. "I do. But you're a trained CIA operative. You'd think of something, wouldn't you? Besides… you're still holding back."

                "What could I possibly have to hide at this point?"

                Ford reached for his glass of wine and sipped it, never breaking eye contact. "Tell me how you found the team. How you knew to contact them."

                Was that all?

                Morgan reached into her handbag and pulled out a half-finished book of crossword puzzles. Tucked between two pages in the middle was a folded sheet of paper, which she plucked out and pushed across the table. "This was slipped under my door the day after Gérard Nejem's apartment was bombed. Just this. Just a name and an email address."

                As Ford took the paper, Morgan took the opportunity to note the reactions of Ford's team. Devereaux looked at the note, then Morgan, then Ford, but her face betrayed no emotion. Parker gave Morgan a little smile and a subtle thumbs up that could barely be seen over the table. Hardison was leaning back in his chair with his arms crossed, watching Parker with a slightly pained expression, almost as if he couldn't care less about the conversation anymore. As for Spencer, he happened to flick his glare up just as Morgan glanced in his direction.

                It was still an unsettling look - something about him was just unsettling, period - but there was less tension in his shoulders and forehead than there had been when he'd turned that glare on her back out on the street. Something about beating the crap out of that pickpocket had, what, calmed him down, maybe? He _had_ let Ford and Hardison pull him off the guy. What was going on inside the mind of a man like this? Probably something else she didn't want to know.

                Ford cleared his throat. "Really? This just… appeared? That's quite convenient, isn't it?" His voice dripped with skepticism.

                "Maybe," Morgan admitted. She'd thought the same thing. "And, trust me… if I'd had another choice… I wouldn't have come to a band of thieves."

                "Don't worry." Parker's voice cut through the tension in the room like a guillotine of cheer. "I forgive you for that."

                Devereaux closed her eyes, but covered up a slight smile with her hand. Hardison rolled his eyes, but the hint of a smirk played on his lips, too. Even Spencer shook his head without his glower.

                But Ford's eyes were dark, and he pinned Morgan with them. "Understand this, Ms. Gray," he said, as if Parker hadn't spoken. Something about what Morgan had said must have touched some nerve, because his tone became dark and flat, menacing in its restraint. "These  _thieves_  are not tools of last resort for the federal government when you just can't book anyone else to do your dirty work. We are no one's clean-up crew. And we're certainly not human shields to protect your job."

                "But, Nate - " began Parker.

                "My answer is no," Ford said. Coldly. Finally. He took another sip of wine. "But you're welcome to stay for dinner."


	16. Chapter 16

                "But you're welcome to stay for dinner," said Nate to Morgan Gray, his voice smoothly shifting from dark to patronizingly light. The shift had an opposite effect on the tension in the air around the table, adding to its density until Sophie felt as if she could spread it on her bread with a butter knife.

                The smile that had risen to her mouth at Parker's characteristic comment dissolved.

                Sophie had seen Nate interact with countless quarries and marks in their years of knowing each other, but even she, a professional at hiding her own emotions and manipulating those of others, couldn't help the gooseflesh that rose on her arms at watching his truly terrifying side emerge. It was a part of him that rarely rose to the surface, but when it did, it was always because something had gotten past his internal brick wall, the wall that protected him from the pain of Sam's death. What's more, Sophie knew that over the past five years the innermost emotional sanctum had accepted additional occupants, as well. The wall protected Nate's most sensitive nerve, and that nerve was directly connected directly to the people he regarded as family… including the team.

                Morgan Gray's actions and remarks had burrowed through a crack in that wall. She was a threat to the people Nate cared about, and no matter how poorly he let those people know how much they meant to him on a regular basis, in moments like these the depth of his feeling was fully revealed by the potency of his anger.

                Cold hatred emanated from his chair as he seemed to try and bore holes into Morgan Gray's skull with his stare.

                Much to the CIA woman's credit, she did not back down from Nate's look. But Sophie watched a vein in her neck vibrate just a little bit faster as her heartbeat increased.

                "As lovely as that sounds, I think I'll pass" said Gray in a flat, dry tone that seemed to be her default. Then again, perhaps that was the only way to reply to Nate's verbal slap in the face with a shred of dignity. Deep, scathing sarcasm for deep, scathing sarcasm. The woman tucked the puzzle book in which she'd been storing the note with the team's contact information into her handbag.

                "Wait," Parker said and looked desperately, not at Nate, but at Sophie. "Morgan saved me. She kept me out of prison. We owe her."

                Oh, those large, innocent eyes. Sophie had missed the younger woman desperately. Of course she wanted to give her anything and everything she wanted. And, truth be told, the fact that Parker seemed to trust Gray was a particularly strong endorsement.

                But Parker was far too close to this emotionally. This job was clearly more to her than fulfilling a duty or repaying the kindness of a duplicitous stranger. Something was broken between Parker and Hardison and Eliot; it was inscribed on all of their faces. It was in the way they leaned away from each other, in the look of pained longing that Hardison fixed on Parker's face but she never acknowledged. It had been in Eliot's shocking outburst of violence on the street and now lurked in the tightness of his set jaw.

                It was more than just this CIA woman and her problem. Morgan Gray had kicked the nest perhaps, but it had obviously been full of hornets before she'd entered the picture.

                _"And Eliot and Hardison were all, 'No, no more clients,'_ " Parker had said.

                The thief had glossed right over it, but there the central issue plainly was: there might not actually be a Leverage team anymore.

                The realization settled into Sophie's chest like the split second before a cough, stealing her breath and seizing her insides. _Oh, Nate, I don't know if we've made it in time._

                She parted her lips to say something, but what? How to reassure Parker? What about the boys? Where to even begin untying this unspoken Gordian knot?

                But Nate's dark tone was back before she could articulate anything. "Parker, my decision is final."

                Sophie's stomach plummeted as the statement was visibly received by the members of the pared-down Leverage team. Hardison's focus flickered away from Parker, and he frowned at Nate. Parker shifted slightly toward Morgan Gray, away from Sophie. And Eliot gripped the edge of the table until the skin drawn tightly over his knuckles turned white. Gray's words had found Nate's nerve, but now his had evidently landed a blow of their own.

                Whereas Sophie's interest in her fiancé's disturbing side had been more of a detached and scientific acknowledgement moments before, it now gripped her with urgency, a sharp certainty that terrifying, black-hate Nate Ford was wrong for this moment. Yet repairing the chinks in Nate's wall after a successful invasion wasn't within Sophie's power. All she could do at this point was catch and divert what was leaking out of them.

                She had to say something… she had to say the _right_ thing. But, again, before she could decide exactly what that thing was - what the words were that everyone needed to hear, that could _fix_ something - Morgan Gray folded her arms and replied.

                "Of course," she said in that same flat voice. " _Your_ decision. This is, after all, _your_ team. They're your people… who I'm sure you were ready to swoop in and save when they were running for their lives out of Portland. And I'm positive they were expecting to meet you here, right?" She stood, and her smile mirrored Nate's empty sneer from minutes ago. "Your decision, Mr. Ford?" she said. "Do you know every person sitting at this table flinched when you said that?"

                It was then that Sophie looked down at her own hands, wringing one another, and felt the tension in her forehead. Morgan Gray had read everyone, including Sophie herself, like an open book.

                "Thanks for trying to help me, Parker," Gray continued. "But I think this interview is over." The look she gave Parker softened her face slightly, but her expression hardened again as she cast a cool look around the rest of the table. Then she stood, picked up her handbag, and walked away. The tiny bell on the restaurant's front door tinkled seconds later.

                Out of the corner of her eye, Sophie watched Nate's brow crinkle, too. Instead of heading Gray off, he'd received another blow behind the wall.

                There were no words, Sophie realized. No words to pick up all of these pieces.

                Perhaps she wasn't the only one to stagger under the weight of that revelation, either, because silence blanketed the table for at least two minutes after Gray's departure. Or, at least, no one spoke. There were plenty of small sounds - Parker's restless leg on the underside of the table, Nate swallowing, Hardison picking at his cuticle, Eliot's perfectly measured breaths - that might as well have been claps of thunder in the thick absence of conversation.

                Though Sophie's money would have been on Parker to finally find the silence unbearable, it was actually Hardison who asked the obvious question… with quite a lot of heavy subtext.

                "Really? You're passing up taking down a dirty CIA guy?" said his words.

                His voice, however, said, _"That woman was right. When did this become your decision?"_ The non-verbal question wasn't delivered the way it might have come from Eliot - with a thinly veiled challenge, or even open hostility. Instead, the fact that Hardison's voice was so carefully neutral, that he didn't sound incredulous, gave it away. It was because he didn't sound like his normally easy-to-read self. He probably didn't even realize that his attempt at keeping his thoughts hidden was just as telling to Sophie.

                Parker's head twitched sideways, and she looked at Hardison for possibly the first time since they'd sat down, then back at Nate. "Exactly. Thank you, Hardison."

                Eliot glanced up at that, and fixed narrowed eyes on the hacker.

                "What, Eliot?" said Hardison with a little heat as the calm, neutral façade cracked.

                "We agreed… " Eliot began.

                 "Agreed? Oh, so now you want to agree. Reach a consensus. All the sudden you're into democracy."

                "What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

                "See? That right there. That's the damn problem."

                "You're - "

                "We can't just let Carson McMaster walk away from this," said Parker over the boys. "Nate, this is what we do!"

                Eliot's attention shifted to Parker. "What _we_ do? Really? From the girl who completely ignored her teammates and snuck off to another country?"

                Parker gave an exaggerated shrug, her eyebrows high on her forehead. "Yes! We're supposed to be a _team_ , Eliot. But all you want to do is break up!"

                "Parker, it's not like that," said Hardison.

                "Yes it is," said Eliot. "But it's the right thing. The safe thing."

                Hardison threw up his hands. "Dammit, Eliot! There. Again. Mr. Executive Decision!"

                "Well someone has to make a damn decision when the guy running point can't even figure out what to frickin' eat for breakfast!"

                "So sorry to have offended you, _Master_ Chef."

                "More like Hell's Kitchen," muttered Parker.

                Eliot slammed his palm down on the surface of the table. Everyone's assorted wine and water glasses vibrated with the impact, Sophie's nearly untouched one actually sloshing over a bit.

                Honestly, whatever was going on with Eliot Spencer over the past couple of hours was getting a bit frightening.

                "Whoa, whoa, _whoa_ , guys," said Nate, his voice escalating in volume with each 'whoa,' until the third was nearly a yell. Parker, Eliot, and Hardison all stopped talking and looked at him. "What's going on here? I - I mean, we just left three months ago. Is this what it's been like the whole time?"

                "No," said Parker as Hardison said, "Yes." Eliot just glowered.

                Nate's eyes lingered on each of them for a moment. "You didn't call? Nothing? You were talking about dissolving the team, and you didn't say anything."

                "Spare us the lecture," said Eliot darkly.

                "Yeah," said Hardison. "You weren't exactly blowing up our phones."

                Sophie felt a stab of guilt at that, but Nate's face was stony - Mastermind - when she glanced at him.

                "You needed space to establish yourselves in a new rhythm," he said.

                "How could you know what we needed?" Parker asked her plate. "You didn't ask."

                Eliot snorted, openly derisive. "Because Nate Ford really gives a rip about what other people are thinking."

                Hardison looked at the ceiling and shook his head. "Amazing. Something we all actually agree on."

                After tossing back the contents of his wine glass in a manner more befitting of a shot of whiskey, Eliot fixed Nate with a look somewhere between disdain and disgust. "Besides. You obviously knew right where we were. What's the point of talkin' when we can always count on you to be a control freak?"

                Nate inhaled deeply - silently, but Sophie watched his chest slowly rise as he filled his lungs - and his nostrils flared.

                God… another hit beyond the wall.

                One more breath, and then all that was left on Nate's face was darkness. The terrifying, nerve-driven Nathan Ford who had lashed out at Morgan Gray on behalf of his team - his family - now turned on them.

                "And it's a good thing I couldn't leave well enough alone, isn't it?" he said, lip curling. "The three of you couldn't manage to keep out of trouble in Portland, _Oregon_ , much less survive five minutes on a real international job."

                That did it. Any hint of sneering swagger went out of Eliot, leaving behind incredulity… and hurt. Though he schooled his expression almost instantaneously into something colder and darker to match Nate's, Sophie knew what she'd seen.

                At certain points during their time together as a team, Sophie had found herself worrying about the fallout of a hit to their collective emotional state. The day Nate had been arrested… that had been one. And when Eliot had revealed his past employment with Damien Moreau. Indeed, as much as she hated to even think of it now, her own quest for the First and Second Davids during their first year. In every instance, something had shaken them all to their cores, gone beyond the normal wear-and-tear of a life spent spinning cons and challenged their ability to continue.

                But she'd never seen, never _imagined,_ something like this.

                Parker and Hardison's faces were slower to transition. Almost in sync, they went from surprise to pain, tarrying there for a few heartbreaking moments before shifting into cold, flint-like frowns.

                Hardison started shaking his head, his lips pressing together so tightly that they nearly disappeared. "That's it. Maybe I am done." He stood.

                "Wait," said Sophie. So much was loaded into that single word: her own pain, her disbelief, her desperation.

                Four pairs of eyes migrated to rest on her, each with a renewed hint of surprise, as if they'd all forgotten she was even present. It was then she recognized  that this was the first she'd spoken since Morgan Gray's departure. She'd done absolutely nothing to stop this disaster... only watched it with the horrified fascination of a bystander witnessing an automobile collision.

                The realization paralyzed her, stole what she might have been about to say. She stared back into the faces of her most precious loved ones. Wordless and bare, unprotected in a thicket of thorns grown from a seed she'd planted herself: the moment she had accepted Nate's proposal and walked away. The moment she'd extricated herself from the hearts of her teammates.

                _"I'm sorry,"_ she wanted to say. It was all she could think of. But, for the third time that night, she never got the chance to force out anything of worth.

                All at once, a chorus of tiny sounds broke out around the restaurant - dings, whistles, vibrations, and, from Hardison's direction, a recorded voice saying, _"It's a trap!"_

                It was Hardison, in fact, who was the first to react to the noises, reaching into his jacket - which, for the first time, Sophie noticed looked a lot like it might be Eliot's - and pulling out his smartphone. He passed a finger over its screen and read whatever was displayed there before the rest of them could even find their own devices.

                "Oh my God," he murmured. He swallowed and sighed, then added, "I guess it doesn't matter now..." He held up his phone so they all could see. "Emergency Alert. Explosion kills eight people in an isolated metro stop. Looks like Carson McMaster already made his move."


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HIYA! So, I'm super sorry for the unexpected two week hiatus. I had a lot going on and just couldn't swing a chapter post. But I hope this makes up for it, just a little bit. We should be back on a normal (weekly update) schedule now, hopefully. Thanks so much for reading and sticking with me to this point! You guys are the best.

                "Emergency Alert," said Hardison as Nate squinted to read what was displayed on the hacker's smartphone screen. "Explosion kills eight people in an isolated Metro stop. Looks like Carson McMaster already made his move."

                A collective intake of breath surrounded the table. A shocked, paralyzed silence followed.

                The attack that Gray had warned them about… it had already happened.

                Some strange hybrid of horror, dread, and relief sank into Nate's stomach. Even if he'd given in to Morgan Gray's request, they would never have made it in time to stop this. In some truly perverse way, this news absolved him of the consequences of his decision. The material consequences, anyway. As for the damage he'd done with regard to the people sitting around this table, even before they'd taken their seats - that there was no immediate absolution for.

                Back in London, Nate had known something was wrong with the new Leverage team - otherwise, he never would have opened up the GPS tracking program on his phone. Or, at least, it would have taken a little more time to wear down his self-control.

                But he hadn't expected this.

                _How_ had he not expected this?

                Mastermind. The brain. Team leader. Words that used to define him. Words that he still used to describe himself in the privacy of his own mind. Words that he clearly did not deserve anymore.

                The mastermind would have kept the big picture in mind when he and Sophie left, would have more seriously entertained a scenario in which the three younger thieves crumbled beneath the weight of the burden he'd so unceremoniously and suddenly thrust upon them. The brain would have dealt with the three month gap differently, put together that something was wrong and fashioned a strategic response.

                And the team leader... he would have focused on Parker, Eliot, and Hardison. He would have not only known, but _cared_ about what the split would whisper to their insecurities - what it would do to their relationships with one another.

                He'd done this to them. In every way, he'd failed them.

                Did they see it that way? Hardison and Parker probably didn't. Despite the hurt that had flashed across their faces at his scathing comment - out before he could consider its consequences  - they were too idealistic or compassionate to pin the blame on any one person.

                But Eliot… the darkness that passed over his gaze whenever it turned to Nate was saturated with accusation. Of the team, Eliot had the most uncanny ability to articulate the critical musings of Nate's subconscious, and he could do it with just a look. Sophie had the gift of showing Nate his best. But, even without meaning to, Eliot somehow managed to hold up the mirrors that reflected Nate's worst.

                Since they'd arrived in Paris, though, there was nothing about Eliot's demeanor to suggest that he _didn't_ mean to give a face to Nate's own spiral of self-blame. Nate wondered if it was his own face that Eliot had seen whilst beating the living daylights out of that unfortunate pickpocket.

                "Wait a sec," said Parker, breaking into Nate's thoughts. She had her own smartphone - the one she'd swiped during her escapade at the American embassy, no doubt - inches from her nose. "The write-up says it was a gas leak."

                Eliot crossed his arms and shook his head. "At a Metro stop during the evening commute? No way. This was intentional."

                "See?" said Hardison. "It's like I said. This was it. This is what Gray was trying to warn us about. Damn… why do these plots always involve trains?"

                "Trains are the new planes," mumbled Sophie. She looked like she might be sick.

                Parker nodded. "Way less security than airports, but guaranteed crowds…"

                "But that stop is only serviced by one line…" began Eliot. Even he was scrolling through something on a mobile screen now, but his eyes were unfocused like he was only half paying attention to it as he thought out loud. "Maximum damage would be to a target closer into town, at a junction. And no one's taken credit. That’s not effective terrorism. Acts of terror are all about ripple effects - causing panic, crippling economies. This was deliberately small scale and anonymous... this was a dress rehearsal."

                The perverse relief slipped out of Nate like oil. That left only the horror and the dread. "So when's the main event?"

                When Eliot glanced up to meet Nate's eye across the table, it was with a familiar, professional urgency in his expression, accusations gone… for now. "Within the week," he said. "Best case scenario, this was practice for a certain set of conditions surrounding a particular day of the week and time of day, and the real thing happens next Friday. Worst case scenario… could be hours from now."

                "Hold up," said Hardison. "So… we're sure this was McMaster, right?"

                Parker's lips pressed together, and she raised her eyebrows in an undeniably 'I told you so' expression. "Know anyone else accused of terrorism lately?"

                Eliot glanced at Parker but then fixed his focus back on the tabletop, where it had been most of the time since they'd walked in. "Whoever it is, they've got plans."

                "Big ones," said Sophie. "If _that_ was a dress rehearsal."

                Another spell of silence fell over them all, in the midst of which Nate reached to pour himself a generous glass of wine. He took a long, hard sip from it before saying, "All right, then. What are we going to do?"

                They all looked at him with varying degrees of surprise.

                "We?" asked Hardison. "Didn't you already make _your_ decision?"

                Damn it all. Of course he shouldn't have stepped so eagerly and easily back into the Mastermind role, but didn't any of them understand why? Morgan Gray could have been anyone. Every facial muscle contraction of hers was deliberate and controlled. He was about to marry a woman who did that, for Pete's sake… he knew what it looked like. And people like that… people like that you couldn't spot hitting or hacking or stealing before they got too close. They talked their way into fortresses and poisoned the water supply.

                He looked at Sophie. Though it had taken years, she was the only grifter he'd ever trusted. Her complexion was ashen, stark against the espresso sweep of her hair across her forehead, and her hands clasped in a tight knot in her lap. She'd barely spoken since selecting the restaurant. Right now, the greatest actress Nate had ever seen was revealing some of what was happening inside her mind.

                The realization hit him like a blow to the gut. Gray had read each of them, Sophie included. Even his fiancée didn't think the call was his to make.

                And she was right.

                If Eliot, Hardison, and Parker had been functioning as a unified team, the decision wouldn't have fallen to Nate. But, as much as they all resented him right now, they were still clearly deferring to him on this. Maybe he wasn't the only one who couldn't help falling back into old patterns.

                He steepled his fingers and inhaled. If he agreed to this, it wouldn't be for Morgan Gray or the CIA. Quite honestly, it wouldn't be for the people of Paris, either, and he was almost certainly going to Hell for that alone.

                It would be because he had been the one person they had all trusted to keep them honest, to pick their jobs, to lead their crew - their family - and he had squandered that trust. If there was one thing that could hold this fragile, fractured team together right now, long enough for him to figure out a way to seal the cracks, it was a job.

                He took another gulp of wine.

                _Not for anyone else,_ he thought. _For them._

* * *

 

                "All right, Hardison," said Ford. "Run it."

                Morgan blinked and slowly turned her eyes to the hacker. Somehow Ford had managed to make that simple sentence sound like a catchphrase.

                Hardison, who was standing next to a truly enormous flat screen television mounted on one wall of the expansive suite's largest sitting area, paused before clicking the button on his laptop's remote. "Yeah, uh…"

                A series of glances got exchanged around the room. Spencer and Hardison made eye contact, as did Ford and Devereaux. Parker turned to look at Morgan from her perch on the edge of the couch they were sharing.

                "I usually say that," said the thief matter-of-factly. "Or, I do now."

                Morgan wasn't sure whether Parker expected a reply to that, so she just nodded.

                Ford cleared his throat. "Excuse me. You… do you want to say it, Parker?"

                "No, that's okay. You can if you - "

                "Can we just get on with it?" growled Spencer.

                "Hardison," said Devereaux, gesturing gracefully with one hand, "Why don't you go ahead. I mean, if you're ready. If you _want_ to," she hastily added.

                Morgan swept a look around the room. None of the other five people looked comfortable, like they'd been the leftover guests at a wedding and thrown together on the seating chart.

                _This_ was the team the FBI and Interpol were so bent on bringing in? Because they didn't look like much of a team.

                She certainly hadn't been expecting a dynamic like this when she'd come to them for help. Then again, after last night, she hadn't been expecting to see them again at all. Ford's deadly glare and scathing remarks had made it very clear that he was not interested in hers or Paris's plight.

                _"But you're welcome to stay for dinner."_

                She'd have to use that one sometime.

                That morning, she had shown up at the embassy as usual, this time wearing her own personnel badge, which she'd stored in a train station locker before leaving for Portland, and looking like she actually belonged there. It had been heaven to take a shower and put on a fresh change of clothes that didn't make her look like a Disney World soccer mom. It had been hell, however, to sit through a never-ending, irate lecture from Dave.

                "Remember the part where I said come _right back_ for debrief?" he'd said, pacing the length of his tiny office, which was, incidentally, still as much of landfill as it had been yesterday. "Geez, Mo, what is wrong with you? We have a job to do, and you're acting like you're on vacation. For all I know, you were sipping Mai Tais in Spain all week. Gérard Nejem is _dead_ , Mo, and you're - Mo? Morgan, are you even listening to me?"

                One of the skills Morgan had found very useful over the course of her career with the CIA was the ability to perform what she called half-surveillance. It involved using one half of her brain to do one thing - like talk to someone at a party - while using the other half to pay attention to the person she was keeping tabs on. So, the answer to Dave's question had been that she was half listening to him… and half wondering what the hell she was going to do about Carson McMaster without anyone to help her. Even worse, a concrete countdown had begun; last night's "gas leak" explosion at an outer Metro stop had gotten the whole Paris office buzzing until McMaster himself had circulated a memo confirming that the incident had been a true accident. Which meant it definitely hadn't been. And she was running out of time.

                "Yeah, yeah, sipping Mai Tais," she muttered. "Please, do go on."

                Okay, maybe she was only quarter listening.

                "Well I want a complete, _prompt_ report on my desk within the hour," said Dave. "On what you were doing the whole damn week, if it's not too much of an inconvenience."

                She glanced up at him with a small smirk. "Hey, congrats. Your sarcasm's getting better."

                Dave glared back. "I can't believe I was worried about you."

                That was when someone had knocked on the door. "Sorry to interrupt," said the ginger-headed guy who poked his head in. "But there's a Brigitte Denis outside who asked for you by name, Ms. Gray."

                Morgan sat up straighter in her chair, at complete attention. _Parker?_

                Dave nodded. "Thank you," he said, then turned back to Morgan with an expectant expression.

                "Figured I'd bring her in for an official statement," she said smoothly. Her mind, however, was jumping around, and something like hope spread warmth through her chest. "You know. Protocol."

                And so she'd ended up in a windowless interview room with, yes, Parker, who greeted her with a megawatt smile and pointed at a few random areas around the room. "Are we…?"

                "Yeah, we're good," Morgan said. "Trust me, some of the stuff that happens in this room… no one wants any kind of record of it. That's the kind of thing that Congress likes to subpoena."

                "Okay, cool." Parker gave a thumbs up and sat on the edge of the simple table in the middle of the room. "So, guess what?"

                "With absolutely zero context as to what I should be guessing, why don't you just tell me?"

                Parker laughed, her nose scrunching up adorably. Morgan had a sudden urge to laugh, too, simply out of relief. She'd been positive she'd never see that blonde head again, and no matter what the thief was here to say, even if it was a proper goodbye, that was more than she had expected. In another life, she probably could have been good friends with this off-kilter criminal, and it had been surprisingly saddening to stalk out of that restaurant the night before.

                "We're taking the job," Parker said.

                Morgan blinked, unsure she'd heard correctly. "Wait, what?"

                "Oh yeah. We're totally on this. McMaster's going doooown." The statement was accompanied by Parker's angled-down thumb charting a trajectory through the air like crash-landing airplane.

                "But - but what about Ford? He seemed pretty set on his answer."

                The glee on Parker's face melted away. She looked at her shoes. "The explosion at the Metro station. We know it wasn’t an accident."

                That didn't exactly answer Morgan's question, but now didn't seem like the right time to pry into whatever was obviously going on between Nathan Ford and his team. "Well, that's great to hear," she said instead.

                "So now's the part where we plan," said Parker, perking back up a bit. "We need you to come to the briefing."

                "The what?"

                "The briefing. It's where Hardison tells us about the mark, and Nate makes sarcastic comments, and Eliot recognizes something distinctive, and Sophie talks about some con she pulled one time. I don't know why it's called a briefing, though, because it always takes forever."

                "No, I mean, I know what a briefing is, obviously. We have a lot of those around here. Quality Sudoku time. Just… really? You all do that?"

                "Duh. We're a - " Parker's voice faltered for just a split second. " - a team."

                Yeah, something about that "team" dynamic was definitely off. "So, what do you do?" Morgan asked, more to get Parker talking about something cheerful than anything else.

                "Hm?"

                "Everyone has their thing they do during the briefing… what's yours?"

                "Oh. Well, I make sure everyone stays on track." Parker looked like she might continue but then paused, her mouth half-open, and put a hand to her right ear. "Wait, what's a non-sequitur?"

                "Um, that."

                It had all taken place, what, maybe an hour ago? Morgan had been forced to come up with a story to placate Dave and pretty much pinky-promise to finish her paperwork before the day was out, but she'd managed to get out of the office with Parker without nearly the same trouble they'd faced the day before. And now here she was, back in the Mandarin Oriental Hotel - only this time she was seated in one of its guest rooms, trying not to do anything that might mark up the blindingly white upholstery of the couch she and Parker shared. Who was bankrolling this swanky setup, anyway?

                Oh, right. World famous thieves.

                "Carson McMaster," Hardison finally began, clicking his remote and throwing pictures of McMaster up onto the screen, including one in which he was shown shaking hand with Morgan. Seeing it made her skin crawl. "Forty-four. Paris station chief for the CIA since 2008, with previous assignments in Senegal, Ivory Coast, and Quebec. So, dude speaks French. Degrees from Wisconsin and Tufts… was a middle-of-the-road intelligence analyst before he transitioned into doing the intelligence collection himself. Not a blemish on his Agency record, but he did have to do community service for smoking pot in college."

                "Hardison," said Ford.

                The hacker rolled his eyes, clicking through the pictures to pull up some graphs and PDF documents. "On first glance, his financials look pretty normal for a government guy, but I did some digging, as I am known to do, and found this little gem of a bank account in Vanuatu - yes, Parker, that is a real place, not something out of World of Warcraft - that tells quite a different story."

                "I've only been to Vanuatu once," said Devereaux, "but I spent three days talking a man out of a priceless slit drum."

                "Best beef in the South Pacific," said Spencer, almost absent-mindedly. Something so innocuous sounded incredibly bizarre coming out of his mouth. "Very distinctive flavor."

                Ford rolled his eyes and deadpanned, "Well, who knew Vanuatu held such a special place in all our hearts?"

                Wow. Parker had pretty much nailed it in her briefing description.

                "Anyway," resumed Hardison, "McMaster's got himself a nice little nest-egg in this offshore account. Looking at his stock portfolios, it's easy to see why - this guy sure knows how to buy and sell at just the right time. He's either clairvoyant - "

                "Or crooked," finished Devereaux.

                Morgan finally read the figure of McMaster's account balance on the screen and nearly choked. That was more zeroes than she could hope to make in three lifetimes.

                "Known associates?" asked Ford.

                The display changed yet again, this time peppered with pictures of other individuals.

                "That was harder," Hardison said. "But Gray's little friend Nejem actually left behind some useful information on that topic. Dunno how reliable this intel is, because Nejem didn't exactly show his work, but the list reads like a who's-who of big-time crime, including some old pals of ours."

                Spencer's eyes narrowed, his jaw setting as his lips molded into a small snarl.  His laser-like gaze fixated on a photograph in the upper left-hand corner of the screen, of a good-looking man with a cell phone to his ear. "Moreau."

                Hardison nodded. "And some of his friends off the evil playground."

                Right. This crew had been in San Lorenzo when Edwin Ribera had been ousted by the opposition candidate in the most recent presidential election. Amidst the world media's fascination with the triumph of democracy, a few other stories had also emerged, one of them about the incarceration of Damien Moreau, a criminal mastermind associated with a laundry list of international crimes that no one had been able to prove… until just before he'd fled to San Lorenzo. Morgan had once worked on an operation intended to gather intelligence about Moreau's vast web of illicit contacts, but the CIA, like every other agency that had ever gone after Moreau, never had enough to take him down.

                But the Leverage team had done just that, she realized. That was the story written on every face in the room. These people hadn't just been part of the democratic revolution in San Lorenzo… they'd chased Damien Moreau there in the first place. And beaten him.

                _This_ dysfunctional band had done that? Maybe there was hope for Paris yet.

                Ford leaned back in his chair, folding his arms behind his head. "So we've got a CIA station chief who plays the stock market like a piano, connected to the underworld… what do we have tying him to the upcoming attack?"

                "You mean besides what I've already told you?" said Morgan flatly.

                "What do we have that's _concrete_?" replied Ford, though he addressed Hardison instead of looking at her.

                Hardison shrugged, but he messed around on his laptop for a second. "Well, there's stuff from Nejem's cloud drive. Here, listen to this. Audio diary file." He pressed a button, and Gérard Nejem's voice came over the television's speakers like a ghost out of Morgan's memory. After a moment, Nejem's recorded French faded in volume, overlaid by a computerized voice that translated its content. Nejem had kept a record of his investigation into McMaster… God bless that man.

                "See?" said Parker. "Listen to my dead boyfriend."

                Hardison looked a little horrified. "Wait, what - "

                Ford spoke over him. "Ideological connections? Is there an extremism element here?"

                "None," said Hardison with a sideways glance at Parker. "This guy seems about as likely to fund terrorism as Darth Vader is to buy Girl Scout Cookies."

                "All right then," said Ford, nodding. "It's all about the money."

                "Finally," said Parker brightly, like they weren't talking about a CIA officer connected to an upcoming terrorist attack. "Somebody gets it!"

                Yeah, about those non-sequiturs.

                Ford stood to join Hardison at the screen and began pointing to a document tucked in a lower corner. "Look at the timing of these deposits to his account."

                Spencer got up, too. He planted himself right smack in front of the screen, obscuring whatever they were looking at from Morgan's view. "These are all within a day or two of prominent arrests, press conferences, coups…"

                "He's pulling off insider trading with classified intel," said Hardison with just a little bit too much awe in his voice. "That's how he's making all that money from stocks."

                Ford crossed his arms, staring down the television display. "A major terrorist attack in Paris… not just based on potentially faulty intelligence but a sure thing… he's going to make millions betting against the market."

                Morgan's stomach churned. She had to concentrate on breathing in through her nose to ward off a wave of nausea.

                They all stared at the screen for a second, then Devereaux spoke, her eyes splitting time evenly between Ford and Parker and her tone careful. "So… what's the game?"

                Never in a million years would Morgan have compared sweet, crazy Parker to dark, assholish Nathan Ford, but in that moment the exact same smirk spread over both of their faces.


	18. Chapter 18

                "All right," said Nate over comms. "Eliot, are you good to go?"

                Eliot flicked his sunglasses down to look up at the exterior of the apartment building just down the block before turning his attention back to its front entrance. "Yeah. You sure this is the right street?"

                "Definitely," said Hardison, who was probably sitting right next to Nate, back in the stupidly huge suite at the hotel Eliot still couldn't remember the name of. "I pulled up a map of the area with the address Parker got out of the embassy's emergency contact directory, and your earbud's GPS signal is right on target."

                After waiting for a couple of motor scooters to pass, Eliot crossed the otherwise quiet residential street. "Which unit?"

                "Five eighteen," came Parker's voice. "Is it a newer or older building? Analog or electronic locks on the front door?"

                "Older building, but with a retro-fitted key card reader."

                He could almost picture Parker's brow furrowing in consideration as she went quiet for a moment, deep into thief-mode. "It's Paris… he's rich… probably high tech outside with low-tech, vintage inside… you might need to manually pick the lock on his place."

                "All right." He'd come prepared with one of Parker's lock-picking kits - how did she manage to sneak things like that through airport security? - in the pocket of the jacket he'd reclaimed from Hardison. Their professional cat burglar was a little tied up with getting Hardison access to the American embassy's encrypted servers, and Eliot's preferred method of kicking in locked doors wasn't going to fly if they didn't want McMaster to know he'd been paid a visit.

                He waited a few minutes for someone to exit the building - a wire-thin, stooped man cradling a baguette like a child - and caught the door to hold it for a young woman also headed out. Ordinarily he would have smiled at the woman to sell the opportunity to bypass the card reader, might have even enjoyed the exchange of a flirtatious look, but he wasn't really feeling up to it today. Instead, he let her pass with a simple, polite nod and headed into the lobby.

                He chose the stairs in case the building's security retrofit included cameras in the elevators. Hardison's typing provided familiar white noise in his ear as he climbed, interrupted intermittently by bits of quiet conversation between Sophie and Nate - ironing out next-step details for the con, probably - and between Parker and Gray - the only two people involved with this job who actually seemed at ease with one another.

                Damn, it ate at him, Parker's trust in that woman. He hated that  that Gray been read into what they were doing, that they were actually depending on her for intel about McMaster and to shuttle Parker into the embassy, and that Parker had gravitated toward her over anyone on the team. Parker had given Gray an earbud, for crying out loud, like she hadn't almost gotten the thief detained by the frickin' CIA.

                Nothing was going the way he'd resolved back in Portland. Goddamn Murphy's Law. When would these people just let him _protect_ them?

                "Eliot? Did you hear me?"

                He blinked and paused mid-step, almost to the fifth floor landing. "What, Sophie?"

                "I asked where you went last night, after we left the restaurant."

                Really? _That_ what she and Nate had been talking about, of all things?

                "I'm almost to the apartment," he muttered.

                "Can't you pick a lock and talk at the same time?" Sophie's tone was light - too light to not be some grifting strategy because it was too light for the team right now.

                He considered a sarcastic response, but the thing that would shut Sophie up quickest would be making a non-event out of his answer. "I went for a walk."

                It was partially true. He'd intended to just wander, take some time to clear his head. He hadn't had a moment alone with his thoughts since they'd abandoned the brew pub, and that wasn't helping the spiral of guilt and anger in his gut that swirled whenever Parker shied away from Hardison or Nate stared across the table too long. Once they'd finally eaten, no one had tried to talk Eliot into going back to the hotel with the group; everyone had been sobered by the revelation that there was undoubtedly an imminent terrorist threat to Paris, and conversation had essentially ceased once Nate offered his grudging approval of supporting Gray's attempts to take down her boss.

                The air of the late spring evening has been cool on his face and filled up his lungs with the aromas of fresh street food - falafel, crêpes, döner kebab. On a normal night in Portland, he would have sampled the vendors' fare, maybe chatted with them a little. But nothing was normal. He felt a little sick just from the plain food he'd barely touched at the restaurant.

                He didn't know how long he'd been walking, but at some point his feet had led him to the banks of the River Seine. There, he'd paused, watching night cruises lazily snake their way through the heart of the city, listened to the songs and conversations of Friday night carousers enjoying themselves, all oblivious to any threat looming in their future. He'd sat down on a bench, absently rubbing his thumbs over callused knuckles. They were tough from years of landing blows on other men's faces, hardly ever prone to splitting like the delicate hands of ordinary guys who only threw the occasional punch.

                He thought back to the late afternoon, to how he'd tackled the pickpocket that Parker had spotted, but he had only vague impressions of grit and anger and chaos where the memory of beating up the poor man should have been. This time, it hadn't been just a floor lamp; he'd transferred everything choking him from the inside onto another human being, his usual, careful control of the darkness inside nowhere to be found. Nate and Hardison had dragged him off, brought him back to his senses, but the damage he'd done in the meantime… in no universe was it a proportional or appropriate response.

                His certainty that splitting up was the only way to keep the team truly safe wasn't just about an inability to pull off jobs anymore. Whatever was driving him insane - it was dangerous to everyone around him.

                A few years ago, Parker could have been that pickpocket. And the idea of hurting her…

                This _had_ to stop.

                Unlike in the _banlieue_ with the refugee camp, English-speaking locals were a dime a dozen in Paris's tourist centers, many of which bordered the Seine. With a hundred Euro, Eliot had been able to secure the bilingual services of an art student willing to make a few calls to local hospitals. That was how he'd learned that Guy Baudin - the pickpocket he'd attacked - was being treated at a small hospital near the Louvre. Baudin's bedside had been the final stop on his otherwise aimless foot tour of the city.

                Baudin had been sleeping when Eliot arrived, which was just as well, since he might not have been too excited to see his assailant again. The pickpocket's face was discolored and badly swollen, his jaw wired shut, and his chart indicated fractures to his skull and three ribs. One of his wrists was handcuffed to his bed's railing.

                Eliot had thought about leaving a note, making some kind of apology, but who knew if Baudin would have understood it. Anyway, what words were there to apologize for incapacitating someone like this? Eliot had inflicted less on men whose sins turned his stomach. A petty criminal like Baudin he could - and should - have knocked out with a single hit.

                He'd found Baudin's effects in a small locker beside the bed, consisting essentially of the man's clothes and a cell phone. No wallets - they'd all probably been taken into evidence by the police - so Eliot tucked all of the cash he had, quite a sizeable wad of Euro bills,  into the inside pocket of Baudin's jacket. Then he'd jotted down Baudin's patient information, added an alias and his phone number, and handed it to the nurse on duty. Even with the language barrier, he was confident he'd gotten his point across: _That man is my responsibility._

                "A walk?" said Sophie's clearly unconvinced voice in his ear as he reached apartment 518. But she didn't push the point. That would probably come later, when she could corner him alone.

                "Eliot doesn't sleep very much," he heard Parker say matter-of-factly, almost certainly for Gray's benefit. "Like a vampire." She followed the comment with a theatrical hiss that filled up the comm channel. Parker sounded almost normal - normal for her, anyway - when she talked to Gray, without the hesitancy that colored her interactions with himself and the team.

                He felt a pang in his chest, accompanied by another flare of resentment toward Gray. Or was that just disgust with himself?

                Maybe he didn’t want to be alone with his thoughts, after all.

                "I'm here," he said, casting a glance down the hallway in either direction and pulling out the lock-pick and tension wrench from Parker's kit. He gingerly coaxed them into the lock and began manipulating them, listening for the right sounds.

                "Are you in yet?" asked Parker after maybe fifteen seconds.

                One of his eyes twitched. He hadn't done this in a while, and he'd never exactly been a whiz at it to begin with. "I'm going as fast as I can."

                "It shouldn't be taking this long."

                He sucked in a breath through his nose but clenched his jaw against any response. It wasn't Parker's fault that he hated this kind of thing, listening for little sounds and working with tiny tools. A good thick-soled boot was the only tool he usually needed to open a door.

                Almost there…

                Someone's earbud picked up an impatient tapping sound that clashed with the rhythm of Hardison's typing. A few doors down, the elevator dinged on its way up.

                "Sophie should have done this," said Parker. "Eliot, someone's going to see - "

                "Dammit," he forced out through gritted teeth, barely keeping his voice down. "I know!"

                "Parker," said the last person he expected to hear right then: Gray. "Quick, get off the desk. Dave's coming. We need to at least pretend I'm interviewing you."

                Parker's tone completely changed as her attention clearly shifted. "But, wait, what do I say?"

                "Just like we did last time, right? Follow my lead. No problem. We're good."

                The last pin of the lock clicked into place, and the entire mechanism finally turned freely under Eliot's hand.

                "I'm in," he breathed, and ducked inside.

                Nate, Sophie, and Hardison all audibly released captive breaths. Parker and Gray's end of the comm channel had already devolved into a staged conversation surrounding Parker's alias as Brigitte Denis, though whoever they were supposed to be talking to didn't actually seem to have shown up yet.

                Eliot took a couple of seconds to center his thinking before getting to work. "All right, I'm in the living room," he said. "No computer, but I'm looking in the - okay, yeah, the second bedroom's an office. Still don't see a computer, though."

                "If he doesn't have a spare laptop," said Hardison, "look for an external hard drive. This guy's not going to keep the juicy stuff in the cloud or on the CIA's servers, so there's a good chance it's in that apartment somewhere."

                Carefully, Eliot began to go through McMaster's things, memorizing what they each looked like before he touched them and then carefully replacing them to fit that mental image. After five minutes or so, he finally had success. "Got it. Hard drive, hidden in a box on the bedroom bookshelf." He pulled the drive out with a gloved hand. "And I stick the UCD thing in it?"

                " _USB_ , Eliot." Hardison's tone was clearly paired with rolled eyes. "Yes. Plug the end into the hole it fits. Even you can do that, right?"

                Eliot felt just a tiny ghost of a smile pass over his lips. He knew what a USB was… but it was good to hear Hardison sound like himself, even if for a second.

                "Yeah," he said. "Even I can do that." The jump drive blinked as he pushed it in. "And now I wait?"

                "Search the rest of the apartment, in the meantime," said Nate. "See if there's anything else of interest."

                "Already on - " He froze.

                "Eliot?" asked Sophie.

                Mounted above the front door, out of his sightline when he'd entered in such a hurry but now clearly visible as he looked back at it, was a small red light.

                "Shit."

                "Eliot?" This time it was Nate. "What's going on?

                Eliot's anger at himself barely allowed a response to escape. "There's a motion sensor above the door," he growled. "And I definitely tripped it.

                Damn it. How long had he been in here? Six minutes? Seven?

                All noise in his earbud ceased. Parker and Gray had stopped talking. Even Hardison's typing had halted. Then Nate said, "Eliot, get out of there now."

                "Wait," said Hardison. The typing resumed in double-time, if that was even possible. "I just… I just need a few more seconds. The upload's almost finished."

                "We'll come back later," said Nate. "Eliot, move."

                "We don't have time to come back later," interjected Parker, obviously not even remotely involved in supplementing her alias now. Her voice was all Mastermind 2.0.

                Eliot vaguely registered Gray saying something about "distracting Dave" and the sound of a door opening.

                Parker continued, "We don't know how long it's going to take to get McMaster on the hook and get what we need. Every second counts!"

                "Seriously, it's almost finished," insisted Hardison.

                Eliot decided to go with the worst case scenario of seven minutes since he'd picked the lock. Better to overestimate than under. The motion sensor hadn't released any sound or even begun to blink; it was designed to do exactly what it had done, which was to attract no attention to itself. That meant either a high-end home security company with on-call personnel or a minimalist system designed to alert only McMaster himself. Either way, no police, but someone was definitely going to crash the party any minute.

                He needed to eliminate one of those possibilities. "Who has eyes on McMaster?"

                "Hardison's got him on the traffic camera network," said Nate.

                "What? No, I don't," said the hacker. "I'm managing the upload from the drive with my right hand and spoofing investment portfolios with my left. I'm not a genie!"

                Sophie, her tone calmer than the others but still betraying a little anxiety, said, "According to the agenda Parker pulled, he's supposed to be meeting with some French government officials - "

                "I don't care where the hell he's _supposed_ to be." Eliot crossed to the nearest window to peer through the blinds. "Why don't we have eyes _on him_?"

                "Nate or Sophie was supposed to watch him once he left the embassy," said Parker.

                Eliot hissed, "Well did you tell anyone that, Parker?" but he already knew the answer. This had been the problem when they'd had her on point: she could plan the con 'til the cows came home, but she couldn't communicate the plan to save her life. In Parker's Mastermind world, everyone could read her thoughts.

                The comm line went quiet again. Eliot's heartbeat increased as he spotted a black SUV pull up outside - an enormous vehicle for the streets of Paris. Four silhouettes were barely visible behind its tinted glass.

                "Response is here. Hardison?"

                "One more… second… okay! Grab and go!"

                But the unmistakable sound of a key - a real key - in the lock made Eliot whip around. No one from the SUV had so much as moved. Damn… whoever was in that car, they weren't here for him. The real response was closer than he'd thought. It had been a minimalist system after all.

                "Scratch that," he whispered and dropped a few choice curse words, snatching up the flash drive. "McMaster's already here."

                "All right. Eliot?" said Sophie. "Listen to me. You need a reason for being in there. Tell him you're - "

                But he was already moving. The latch on the window was simple and the frame almost two and a half feet across. For Parker, crawling out of it would have been a breeze, and she probably could have dangled from the window sill by her outrageously strong fingertips. For Eliot, it was only just doable, and he was lucky every single Parisian architect seemed to have had a fascination for dressing their windows with faux balcony railings that were easy for a normal - relatively speaking - person to hold on to.

                He had just cleared the window's sightlines and pulled it partially closed behind him when he heard a baritone voice say, "No, I won't be requiring your services any longer." A single set of footsteps moved from the hallway into the apartment. "Yes, I understand, but there's no one to kill. The target is already dead. Listen, let me call you back. I'm dealing with a bit of a situation on this end…"  Irritation crept into the voice as the footsteps came closer to Eliot's hiding place. "Fine. Yes, we'll settle up later."  

                If he hadn't been hanging from a decorative wrought iron structure, Eliot would have moved to get a look at the man speaking so casually about what was clearly an arranged hit. But as the footsteps entered the bedroom, careful and deliberate - searching - Eliot could only press himself as flat against the building's exterior as possible and pray that the voice's owner didn't look out the window too closely.

                "Eliot?" said Nate after a moment. "Are you clear?"

                "For now," Eliot growled under his breath. "Clear and dangling five stories off the ground."

                Everyone released some sort of surprised noise, except for Parker, who said, "Six stories, actually. The French don't number the ground floor."

                Eliot rolled his eyes, but tried not to let his irritation and adrenaline completely take over. "Just - did you guys get any of that?" he whispered. "What he was saying?"

                "Sure did," said Hardison. "Man, that earbud's ambient mic is doing a great job - "

                "Yeah, that's _great_ ," said Eliot sarcastically.

                "Eliot, if he sees you, we're blown," said Parker. "He'll never believe that his investment manager double-crossed him on the same day someone broke into his apartment… he'll get suspicious the moment Sophie tries to set the hook."

                "Forget about whether he sees you," said Nate. "Don't take any unnecessary risks."

                What planet were they on right now? Parker was rabidly invested in this job, pushing harder and harder - usually that was Nate's thing. Leaving Nate to, what, be the voice of caution? Nathan Ford?

                Parker made an irritated noise in her throat. "Risks? We're trying to stop a - "

                "Guys!" shouted Hardison, and Eliot winced at the sudden increase of volume in his ear. "Shut up! Let Eliot do his thing!"

                _Thank you, Hardison_ , thought Eliot, though his gut twisted with the thought that the hacker might not accept his gratitude in person. Damn, their team dynamics right now were _worse_ than when it had just been the three of them. Miscommunication, unclear leadership, undercurrents of resentment - no wonder Eliot was dangling off the side of a building right now.

                McMaster's footsteps took what seemed like an eternity to pace what had to be every inch of the floor. Eliot's fingers began to cramp.

                This guy was CIA, a real professional. He wasn't going to leave until provided with an explanation for the motion detector's signal, and any second he was going to notice the window ajar. Somehow, Eliot had to suggest an alternative to a break-in, or Parker was right - McMaster would know something was going on, and they'd never get anywhere near him.

                "Sophie…" he began under his breath, his words strained by the effort of keeping his fists closed around the iron bars. "Need you… bird problem…"

                "Bird problem?" she repeated.

                But Nate got it. "Hardison, give me McMaster's cell phone number."

                "Okay, wait, hold on just a second - "

                "Why don't you have it pulled up already?"

                "I told you, I am doing a _thousand_ different things right now!"

                Gray - for once, her cadence completely devoid of any deadpan snark - said, "It's 6 92 24 36 77."

                A brief pause, then a phone was ringing in someone's earbud, and Eliot heard McMaster say from inside the apartment, "Allo?"

                Nate immediately began speaking in rapid French. Of course, Eliot didn't understand a word of it, but Nate seemed to have understood the idea: to tell McMaster that the entire building had been experiencing problems with birds getting indoors. Whatever that was in French, Nate must have said it, because the CIA station chief moved closer to the window, and after a second, Eliot heard the latch click back into place. The footsteps retreated.

                "A bird problem," said Sophie like she might be smiling a little. "People often can't remember whether they've latched their windows properly… that was very clever, Eliot."

                Clever? No. Try desperate.

                This job was already a disaster.

                "Someone better be coming to get me down."

               

               

          


	19. Chapter 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for all the recent kudos! I'm so glad people are enjoying the story. Sorry this is a day late, but... well, you know how life gets.
> 
> By the way, I changed the rating for the story from General Audiences to Teen and Up, since there's been some mild swearing in the last couple chapters. Hope that's okay.

                Hardison had done his best to establish a mobile command center with the gadgets he'd been able to fit in his carry-on, but the dining room table he'd commandeered still didn't hold a candle to the functionality of headquarters or Lucille. As he filtered and analyzed the data Eliot had transferred from Carson McMaster's external hard drive earlier that afternoon, the hacker pictured poor Lucille 4.0, alone in a sea of normal, boring cars in Seattle-Tacoma International Airport's parking garage. What he wouldn't give to have her on hand right now… and a big bottle of Orange Squeeze.

                Just _something_ familiar would have been nice.

                Already it was Saturday night, and even though they'd managed to go from briefing to recon to setting the stage for hooking their mark all in one day, who knew how much longer they'd actually have to pull this off? The success of their plan hinged on believable timing, but time was the one thing they didn't know if they had. When Hardison, Parker, and Eliot had last dealt with a terrorist threat - something Hardison had never thought he'd say - everything had taken place within the span of a single day, like a real-life episode of _24_. Yet somehow Hardison thought he might almost have preferred that mad rush and the longest day of his life to knowing next to nothing about the target or timing of what faced Paris now. Every passing hour in the City of Light felt like a round of Russian roulette, except no one had any idea how many chambers there were in the revolver.

                Sheesh, with all this stress his similes were starting to sound like Eliot's.

                Speaking of Eliot, he was lying down on one of the couches, arm draped over his face like he might be napping. But Hardison knew better. Eliot didn't take naps; he used moments of immobility to keep tabs on everyone else. Hence the lying on the couch instead of one of the Mandarin Oriental's amazingly fluffy beds; the couch was out here in the middle of everything.

                That said, Hardison did detect a certain air of fatigue about the hitter, which would be no surprise, considering that the guy had held onto a sixth story decorative balcony railing for almost half an hour today - if Eliot were anyone else. But he _wasn't_ anyone else; Eliot Spencer didn't show other people how tired or hurt he was beyond the occasional grumpy application of ice packs. The guy had gotten shot twice in DC and basically walked it off, for God's sake.

                Eliot not trying to hide his fatigue was one more sign that Hardison's worst fears were coming true. Everyone was coming unglued - not just as a team, but as individuals - and there wasn't anything he could think of to stop it from happening.

                "Hardison, what have we got?" asked Nate, coming over to the makeshift workspace.

                The hacker glanced up, but let his fingers continue typing on autopilot. Nate's shoulders were hunched, and every once in a while he would glance at a member of the team - Sophie out on the terrace, Parker at the breakfast bar eating fistfuls of cereal from a box literally labeled "Choco Crack" (thanks for that, France), or Eliot on the couch. And then there was Morgan Gray - in the study, doing some "paperwork" - who Nate never looked at once, either because he clearly didn't trust her, or like her, or because he wasn't even thinking about her. Because this was Nathan Ford, all three were probably somehow true.

                "Behind every giant stash of cash, there's a money manager curating it like a museum," Hardison said and turned his laptop so that Nate could clearly see the screen. "But McMaster's guy just made some pretty bad decisions with a big chunk of his client's change… so our man will be looking for someone else to trust with his post-attack earnings."

                Nate nodded, barely glancing at the accounts Hardison had altered or the hedge fund profiles he'd spoofed. "Good job."

                "That's it? Don't want to check the details?"

                The former mastermind quietly snorted, like a half laugh. "No… that's all right. You've done just fine for three months without me checking your work."

                Hardison blinked, frowning, unable to tell if that was Nate being sarcastic or weirdly sincere. If his demeanor during Eliot's break-in to McMaster's apartment was any indication, it might actually be the latter. After his spiteful remarks at the restaurant the night before, Nate had basically been acting like the opposite of himself: cautious, quiet, hands-off.

                "Yeah, okay," Hardison said. He rotated the laptop back toward himself. But Nate didn't move. "Uh, Nate? You need something else?"

                "Hm? Oh. No. No, sorry." Nate's gaze made its rounds to each member of the team again. "Actually… Listen, Hardison - " Mumbling something that Hardison didn't quite catch, Nate pulled out the chair next to his and sat down. He sighed. "You did a good job today."

                Hardison's fingers paused on the keyboard.

                "Listen, I'm really… you know… I mean, it's…" Nate's right hand punctuated his inability to form a coherent sentence, gesturing erratically in the air and then flopping unceremoniously to his lap.

                What was this? For the first time since Nate and Sophie's arrival, Hardison noted a deep frown line between Nate's brows. Paired with the hunched shoulders, the man looked practically undone.

                They sat in silence for a moment. Then Nate pressed his lips together and sucked a breath in through his nose, standing up again. "Just… keep up the good work," he said.

                "Yeah…" Hardison slowly nodded. "You got it."

                Still, Nate didn't leave. He gripped the back of the chair he'd vacated, staring at its fine-grain leather upholstery like it might divulge the Da Vinci Code.

                "… Nate?"

                "Hardison… " Nate didn't look up, just spoke to the chair in a voice barely loud enough to be understood even two feet away. "You kept us on track today. And we needed that."

                Kept them on track? When had that happened?

                His confusion must have shown on his face, because Nate continued, "Parker and I… we were calling two very different plays. But you saw what we needed most, to trust Eliot, and you said something. So… thank you."

                _"Guys! Shut up! Let Eliot do his thing!"_

                … Nate was thanking him for that?

                Hardison's respect for Nate had always gone beyond the other man's abilities as the brainpower behind elaborate cons. More than anything, Hardison appreciated Nate's leadership and mentorship - the way he knew how to pull the best out of each member of the team. Even at his worst, drunk and reckless and caustic, there was no one smarter or better suited to guide the Leverage ship through the iceberg-filled waters of human error and unpredictable marks. And when Nate had filled out that silly evaluation form after the job with the gold-buying siblings in Oregon, when he'd told Hardison that he should be 'proud' of the plan, even if it hadn't been perfect or effective, Hardison had thought that maybe, just maybe, Nate believed that the hacker could do what he did. Maybe not right then, but one day. And then it had been Hardison who Nate confided in about their real reason for moving to Portland, asking for his help in setting up the final job with the Black Book…

                To be honest, Hardison had thought it would be him. He'd thought that, if there was a clear choice to step into Nate's shoes, he was it.

                But then Nate had begun looping Parker into how he planned their jobs, and the night Nate and Sophie had left the team, she'd told Hardison and Eliot about a conversation she'd had with Nate, in which he'd passed the mastermind torch - not to the hacker, but to the thief.

                God, he'd wanted to be happy for her, to be proud of how far she'd come and how smart she was. And he really had tried. Because he loved her.

                But it had been hard to watch her step into the role that he believed, deep down, was his. When she'd begun having trouble communicating her plans in the midst of jobs, he struggled not to feel vindicated. Then they'd talked about it and shifted to Hardison on point, just for a job or two, to see how that would work, and it was better. They were better.

                And then they weren't. The guilt had been too much. The guilt… and knowing all the while that he hadn't actually been Nate's choice. He'd imploded.

                _"Why not me?"_ he wanted to ask Nate now, like the answer to that question could explain everything that had happened, could make sense of the mess. _"What was wrong with me?"_

                 Instead, he said, "Sure. Yeah, um, you're welcome." He paused. "That… means a lot coming from you."

                Nate smiled briefly, tight-lipped. They held eye contact for a moment. "Well, I'll… leave you to it, then."

                "Yeah. I'll come get you when I'm done and give Sophie the details about your cover."

                "Great." Another barely-a-smile, and Nate went to join Sophie out on the terrace.

                For a minute, the only sounds echoing through the suite's large, open floorplan were Hardison's fingers on the keys and the crackling as Parker reached into the box of Choco Crack.

                Eliot and Nate weren't the only ones to be acting strangely since they'd all returned to the hotel. Parker, who had been incredibly intense in her comm channel commentary and insistence that Eliot do whatever it took to get the job done, had been essentially silent since they got back. Now that Nate had mentioned Hardison's _"shut up"_ interjection, the hacker wondered if Parker had reacted to it, too… only differently.

                He got up, intending to walk over to her, but his cowardly subconscious steered him left, into the kitchen, instead of right, toward Parker.

                He paused in the middle of the kitchen, between the oven and the dishwasher, and thought about slamming his head in the freezer door. Man, he had to get over the knot in his stomach that tightened whenever he thought about talking to Parker. She was upset with him; he knew that. They'd been touch-and-go before all of this had started - these three months had been hard - but it somehow made it worse that he'd thought they were good back in Seattle, and then she'd disappeared to France without a word. Then he'd hacked into the United States embassy for her, programmed at the speed of light for her, and he'd heard that note in her voice that told him she loved him… but the moment Nate and Sophie had arrived and they'd all talked about what to do with Morgan Gray… there had been a look of betrayal in Parker's eyes when he'd stood with Eliot.

                _Damn_ , he thought, opening the refrigerator to rummage through it, like maybe that would justify his unintentional retreat in here. _Come on, Alec, you have to -_

                But his internal monologue and all other thought processes abruptly ceased.

                The refrigerator's entire top shelf was filled with bottles of orange Fanta.

                "They don't have Orange Squeeze here," said a quiet voice behind him, nearly stopping his heart with surprise.

                He whirled around. Parker was standing at the mouth of the kitchen, hugging the Choco Crack box against her chest.

                "I did a taste test," she said. "Fanta was the closest."

                His stopped heart restarted as he got over the shock of her sudden appearance. Then it soared. Parker had been thinking of him. Better yet, Parker wanted to _talk_ to him. More than anything, he wanted to just pull her into his arms right then - but the box of cereal was a clear barrier she'd erected between them, like the wall of belongings she'd built on the hotel bed in Seattle. She'd made a move of normality and reconciliation, but something was still obviously wrong.

                "Parker… " His voice was hoarse when he spoke, so he cleared his throat, but it didn't seem to help. "Parker, I - "

                "I'm sorry," she mumbled to the floor.

                He blinked. "What?"

                "I'm sorry I flew to Paris without you. I'm sorry I made you worry and hack into the embassy for me. I'm sorry I pushed Eliot too hard and too much and too loud and too - "

                "Whoa! Whoa, whoa, whoa - hold up there, mama. Don't… you don't need to apologize to me."

                "Yes, I do." She hadn't looked at him until now. When she did, her eyes were wide, vulnerable and scared. "I'm sorry I ruined the team," she whispered so softly that he barely caught it.

                Hardison was so taken aback that it took him a second to even fathom a response. "Ruined…? Parker, no. No, you didn't do this. This… what's happening to us…"

                How could she think this was her fault?

                No sooner had he mentally asked the question than its answer became painfully obvious. The Parker standing before him was not the beautiful, confident, sensitive woman into whom he'd watched the world's most talented thief evolve over the course of five years. No, the Parker in this kitchen had regressed into a confused and terrified child - the foster kid, the loner, the little girl from Kansas City who'd never been able to figure out why her father seemed to hate her so much or forgiven herself for teaching her brother to ride a bike. When things around Parker fell apart, she turned the blame on herself.

                He heard her voice in his memory: _"I think people are like locks. Really complicated and frustrating, but you can't force them. You have to take time and be fiddly."_

 _Fiddly_ , said his brain. But his gut said, _She needs you._

                Ignoring the cereal box wall, he stepped toward her and enveloped her slim frame in a tight embrace. It felt more than right; it felt like the only action of any importance in the entire world.

                The Choco Crack box dropped to the floor between them, scattering bite-sized chocolate beads all over the white marble. One of Parker's arms snaked around his waist, followed by the other. And he wasn't just holding her. They were holding each other.

                He didn't know how long they stood there like that, but it felt like a sweet moment out of time. In reality, not more than a couple seconds could have passed, though, because suddenly Eliot appeared in the doorway, his eyes alert and body tense.

                "What happened?" demanded the hitter. "Are you - "  A few pieces of Choco Crack crunched beneath his shoe, and he looked down at the floor, then back up at Hardison and Parker. "I heard the box fall, and it got too quiet."

                "We're fine, Eliot," Hardison said flatly. Or, he tried to say it that way, but it came out much gentler than he'd intended. Despite some still very serious unresolved issues between Eliot and himself, the sheer relief coursing through Hardison at having Parker close could have softened sandpaper at that moment.

                And Eliot, even though he'd done nothing but scowl and growl for three days, appeared maybe - just slightly - relieved, too. "All right," he grumbled, nodding slowly. "Well… just don't forget to clean this up."  

                Hardison rolled his eyes, but he caught himself smirking. "Aye aye, Captain."

                Eliot's expression of relief faded, and he fixed Hardison with a glare, but it was the kind of glare that simply said, _"Dammit, Hardison"_ without any strange subtext, and that was actually reassuring.  The hitter opened his mouth like he might say something else, but at the last second seemed to change his mind, and he left the kitchen without another word.

                Parker mumbled something against Hardison's chest.

                "Hm? What was that, babe?"

                She turned her head so that her cheek was pressed against him instead of her nose and lips. "No, we're not," she said.

                "Not? Not what?"

                "Fine. You told Eliot we were fine… but… we're not."

                The warmth began to drain out of Hardison. "We're… why not?"

                She tilted her head up and met his eyes. Hers were still wide and uncertain. "The team is broken," she said. "I wasn't good at being Nate, and now everything's wrong. I thought if we could do this job… everything would go back to normal. But it's not normal. This isn't what I planned. I tried to be Nate, but Nate wasn't Nate, and it's all just so messed up!" She hid her face again, only now she began to tremble and Hardison felt dampness on his shirt. She was crying.

                Another wave of understanding hit him. The moment they'd gently pushed Parker out of the position of team leader, they'd sent her the same signal as every other person who'd ever hurt her: _You aren't worthy._ Maybe blindly coming to Paris with Morgan Gray had been about more than saving the team; it had been about proving that _she_ could save the team.

                And all he'd been thinking about was why it hadn't been him. _God, I'm so selfish_.

                "Shhhh… " He stroked her hair, on the verge of tears himself, and made a decision.

                "Hey, listen," he murmured and put a finger under her chin so that she was looking at him again. "You don't have to be anyone but yourself, okay? We don't need you to be Nate. We need you to be Parker… and Parker was made for this."

                Nothing - not leading the team, not planning the cons, not Nate's approval - was more important than the fragile girl in his arms. Even if Leverage International came crashing down around them, he would make sure she knew that.

                He felt her fingers contract as she made little fists against his back. She hiccupped out another sob, but then she sniffed and pulled away from him a little without breaking out of his hold, wiping her eyes with her sleeve.

                "Made… made for what?" she asked.

                He smiled softly, filled with affection for her red eyes and blotchy nose and the tear streaks she'd missed on her left cheek. He loved every bit of her, and he would do whatever it took to keep her. "Made to keep this team together," he said. "Made to guide us through the storm." He paused before adding, "Parker, I should have stood by you. I should have trusted you. If you say Morgan Gray is our client, then she's our client. You just… let me know how I can help."

                Parker's bottom lip trembled, but then, finally, a smile broke over her face to match his. It was uncertain, and still a little sad, but it was a smile nonetheless, and it sent all the warmth coursing through him again.

                "Okay," she said.

                "Okay," Hardison echoed, and he covered her smile with a kiss.

* * *

 

                After the stress and bewilderment of the past forty-eight hours, Sophie deeply appreciated every sip of her €20 glass of Sauvignon Blanc. She nursed the wine while keeping an eye on the posh bar's entrance. Any moment now, Carson McMaster would arrive for his habitual start to every Sunday evening: a Jameson whiskey and ginger-ale.

                "And you're sure he's going to be there?" said Nate's voice in her ear.

                "Positive," replied Morgan Gray. "He never misses it."

                Sophie smiled into her glass. There was nothing a grifter loved more than a creature of habit.

                She had somewhat recovered from her catatonic state of Friday night at the restaurant, due in equal parts to a startlingly obvious need within the team for mediation, which she was determined to meet, and an unexpected boost of sweetness to everyone's dynamic provided by the reconciliation of Parker and Hardison without any outside help. Sophie hadn't witnessed whatever had transpired between the thief and hacker to draw them back to each other, but something had obviously changed between them for the better. Parker's eyes didn't slide past Hardison anymore, and he didn't stare longingly at her in clear agony. In fact, since yesterday afternoon, they'd been practically inseparable.

                "So I get to stay here for this part, right?" Parker had brightly asked at their meeting that morning, in preparation for setting the hook with McMaster. Unlike during yesterday's comm channel communication disaster when Eliot had almost gotten caught in McMaster's apartment, Parker hadn't tried to push any reckless leadership agenda. In fact, she'd done a very good job of offering planning suggestions and adjusting to alternate points of view. Hardison's arm around her shoulders was clearly a calming influence.

                If only reconciling the rest of the team were so simple.

                Nate had shaken his head. "You need to go back to the embassy with Gray. We need a blank employee badge to program for Sophie's cover story."

                "Well, I can get that," said Gray, shrugging.

                "No," said Nate. "I think we'd rather - "

                "Why not?" interrupted Parker. "Morgan works there. No one will think twice about it. Everyone still kind of looks at me funny."

                "She _is_ a CIA agent, Nate," added Hardison, but not with accusation. Evidently his reconciliation with Parker had also resulted in some sort of favorable neutrality toward Miss Gray, as well.

                "Officer," said Gray and Eliot at the same time. Immediately they looked at each other, exchanged identical looks of blended surprise and suspicion, and looked away again.

                "Jinx!" exclaimed Parker.

                Hardison bit his lip, probably to keep from laughing. "Uh, actually, babe, that's not really how it works." He glanced between Eliot and Gray. "So, wait, what was that?"

                Gray's eyebrows rose slightly. "What? Oh. I'm a CIA officer. We're not 'agents.' That's all Hollywood."

                Eliot's silent glare at the wall clearly corroborated the explanation.

                "Fascinating," deadpanned Nate.

                Sophie knew exactly why Nate was so resistant to having Morgan Gray complete part of the con, and it had nothing to do with her skills or the practicality of her position: he simply didn't trust her as far as he could throw her.

                Interestingly enough, Sophie couldn't say the same. She felt oddly at ease with Gray around, and for a few reasons. First, the presence of an outsider acted as a sort of buffer for the team. Eliot and Nate, for example, clearly disliked Gray, but at least that gave them something in common right now, and some portion of their dislike was being spent on someone else, instead of each other. Second, Parker was clearly fond of Gray, and Gray of Parker, and Parker didn't make friends easily. Though Sophie hadn't quite figured out what it was that cemented the connection between the two younger women, anyone that Parker actually trusted was worth some consideration. Third, Morgan Gray was actually helping. She'd steered Parker's attention away from Eliot's poor lock-picking the day before, kept embassy personnel busy while Parker talked to the team or performed her duties as a thief, and she'd maintained a level head when they'd needed McMaster's phone number. And finally, Gray was a professional grifter, no matter the side of the law that employed her, and to Sophie, at least, that made her predictable.

                And so she'd added, "I think _Officer_ Gray can handle it, Nate."

                Thus, Gray had gone to the embassy alone this time. About an hour ago, she'd checked in and given Hardison the number on the blank external contractor's ID she'd procured, and the hacker had finished establishing Sophie's alias. Sophie, in turn, had picked up the badge from a dead drop, and now it was safely tucked inside her handbag.

                "Eliot, you have eyes on McMaster?"

                The hitter himself had insisted that someone actually keep tabs on the CIA station chief this time. No one wanted a repeat of yesterday's catastrophe.

                So far - touch wood - things were running much smoother overall.

                "Yeah," said Eliot. "Right on time. Here he comes."

                Sophie adjusted herself on the barstool, letting her skirt show just a little more thigh, and watched the door.

                Seconds later, a tall, fair-haired man entered the bar, a suit jacket slung over one arm. He was fit, with a strong jaw and good posture. He removed his sunglasses, hooking them in the front of his shirt as he crossed to the bar, and Sophie caught a glimpse of bright, intelligent green eyes.

                "Nate," she murmured without moving her lips. "This one is dangerous. I can already tell." The good-looking ones always were.

                "And you're Sophie Devereaux," Nate replied. "Give him hell."

                She had to pretend to dab her mouth with a cocktail napkin to hide her smile, but then she took a deep breath and transformed.

                "Jameson and ginger-ale," McMaster had just finished saying when she sidled up beside him.

                "Oh, wow!" Sophie unleashed a full, beaming smile. "Excuse me, but you're American, aren't you?"

                McMaster turned to look at her, and a pleased smirk quirked his mouth. "So I am. And how nice to meet a fellow Yank."

                Sophie extended her hand. "Faith Copeland."

                McMaster shook it. "Carson McMaster."

                "It's a real pleasure to meet you. Please excuse me eavesdropping, but I just got into town and don't really know anyone yet. Add that to the fact that I don't speak any French - well, once someone told me that I had a certain _joie de vivre_ and I looked it up, but that doesn’t count - and, anyway, I guess what I'm trying to say is that I kind of gravitated toward the sound of home."

                He smiled at that, biting on the damsel in distress bit. Ah, the classics.

                "The pleasure's all mine, Ms. Copeland," he said.

                "Oh, please, call me Faith." Sophie tilted her face down somewhat, so she could look up at him through her eyelashes, and picked up her wine glass with her left hand. His gaze flickered to her fingers, where he'd undoubtedly register her lack of wedding ring.

                "Faith," he repeated. "Can I buy you another glass of wine? What were you drinking?"

                And they were off to the races.

                She tried to keep the conversation away from occupations as long as possible in order to lay crucial groundwork in making herself likeable before setting the hook, but it didn't take long for McMaster to circle back to the inevitable question:

                "So, Faith, what's brought you to Paris all alone?"

                Her reaction to the question was natural, her response honest and matter-of-fact - not emphasized in any special way. That was crucial. He needed to be pleasantly surprised, but at the same time she needed to seem absolutely harmless. "Actually, I'm working at the American embassy." She reached into her handbag and pulled out the personnel badge, flashing it modestly. "Just got all my paperwork done on Friday. So, if you ever have any passport troubles…" She grinned and raised a shoulder playfully. "Well, actually, I won't be able to help you at all. But I'm sure I'll meet some people who can."

                He blinked.

                This was the moment. Setting the hook wasn't the hardest part of landing a mark; a good grifter made the hook impossible to feel going in. No, the most difficult and precarious part of gaining someone's confidence was helping them to suspend their disbelief in coincidence. The smarter the mark, the harder it was to convince them of serendipity.

                McMaster's face broke into an enormous smile. "You're kidding. You're not going to believe this, but I actually work at the embassy, too." He reached into his back pocket and pulled out his own badge, which noted only that he worked in the "Office of Cultural Affairs." Nothing about being the number one American spook in Paris, naturally.

                Sophie very quietly released the breath she'd been holding. She had him.

                The voice of Morgan Gray in her earbud said only, "Well, holy shit."

                "She's the best," said Nate. Pride swelled in Sophie's chest at hearing it, but she carefully kept it off of her face.

                She let her jaw drop, giving McMaster a light smack on the arm with the back of her hand. "No! Really? Stop messing with me."

                "I am being completely serious."

                They both leaned in a little bit.

                "Wow," said Sophie. "Really, that is the most amazing thing I've heard all day. You just blew my mind."

                "All right, Hardison, that's the signal," said Nate. "Make the call."

                Her phone began chirping, its ringer on almost maximum volume for this bit. "Oh! I'm sorry, Carson, can you hold on for just a second? I've been expecting this call all day."

                McMaster smiled and inclined his head. He really was quite charming - too charming. Very dangerous. "By all means."

                She answered. "Hello?"

                "Hey, hey, hey," said Hardison on the other end, his voice also echoing in her earbud. "This is your friendly neighborhood hacker, calling to pretend to be Nate, who's pretending to be a shady money manager."

                "Yes, this is she. Thank you so much for returning my call."

                "So, what are you guys feeling for dinner tonight? What do they call those thin little pancake things, again?"

                "Crêpes," muttered Eliot.

                "Yeah, those. Those look pretty good. They put like meat and cheese in 'em sometimes, right?"

                 "Oh, that's wonderful!" continued Sophie. "Oh, thank you so much, Mr. Gill. Yes. Oh, that's honestly so fabulous. I'll go ahead and put down my deposit on the apartment I was looking at, then. Really, thank you so much."

                "So, yes to crêpes?"

                "That's enough, Hardison," said Nate, sounding vaguely amused. "Let her off."

                Sophie nodded and smiled. "Of course, Mr. Gill. Oh, you're so kind. Thank you so much. Yes, talk to you soon. Buh bye." She hung up.

                "Good news?" asked McMaster, sipping his drink.

                "Yes, incredibly." She tucked the phone back in her handbag. "Call me old fashioned, but I don’t like to trust people oceans away with my money, you know? So I was looking for a really good financial advisor in Paris, someone who knows the tax structure, can recommend on investments, that kind of thing. Well, one of my really good friends from back in DC had recommended this expat guy to me who's supposed to be some kind of finance wizard. He was ridiculously hard to get hold of, though - I mean, he doesn't have an office or an email address so I had to go through like fifteen different people to just get his phone number. But, anyway, that was him."

                Now for the hook. _Suggestion. Let him fill in the blanks._

"But…" She lowered her voice conspiratorially and used the opportunity to get into McMaster's personal space, which she could tell he didn't mind one bit. "… It seems kind of shady, doesn't it? I feel like I just made some kind of drug deal." Abruptly she burst out laughing, slapping the counter for emphasis. "Sorry! I've been told I'm a little bit of a drama queen."

                Something glittered in McMaster's eyes that hinted at something dark beneath his charming façade.

                  _Yes,_ Sophie thought. _You're a smart boy. Put it all together._

                "Some people simply prefer word-of-mouth advertising," he said smoothly. "My last finance manager was the same."

                "Really? Oh, that does actually make me feel better. Who do you use now?"

                "Incidentally, I'm in the process of trying to find someone new. My current man, well, he's made a few mistakes recently and I'm not altogether convinced that our relationship should continue."

                Good. He'd noticed Hardison's handiwork. All according to plan.

                Sophie wrinkled her nose. "I'm sorry to hear that."

                "Thank you," said McMaster with a quick smile. "Perhaps… well, maybe you wouldn't mind sharing Mr. Gill's information?"

                "With my first friend in Paris? I'd love to be able to help." She raised her glass. "Cheers."

                "Cheers."

                "Ladies and gentleman, that is how it is _done!_ " said Hardison, and he whistled appreciatively, eliciting sounds of pain from everyone else on the comm channel.

                "Owwwwww!"

                "Dammit, Hardison!"

                "I think I just saw a window crack..."

                "Hardison," said Nate flatly. "No more whistling." He paused. "But, Sophie? Flawless."


	20. Chapter 20

                Morgan stifled a yawn as she gathered her things from the hotel suite's study - the fanciest workspace she'd ever used or would ever use again. She had finally finished a stack of reports to shut Dave up and also drafted fake transcriptions of interviews with "Brigitte Denis" about the death of her "boyfriend," Gérard Nejem, and his involvement with Libyan extremists. Until this terrorist attack plot was taken care of and Carson McMaster was safe and sound behind bars, Morgan needed an excuse to not be reassigned, and milking Parker's cover was her best chance for that.

                Even so, how she loathed paperwork.

                As she opened the study door, she spotted Parker and Hardison sitting on one of the enormous living room couches - Parker cross-legged and Hardison in a more sprawled recline, his arm around her. They were smiling and goofing around, seeming to be fully at ease around each other since their reconciliation the day before. Morgan thought back to Parker's request for orange soda on their Wednesday night flight out of Seattle. Even when they were apart, disagreeing about whether to help Charlotte Dahl, Parker had clearly never stopped thinking about or believing in Alec Hardison. She had, after all, had complete faith that he would be able to take care of the facial recognition debacle at the embassy. To see the thief acting naturally now, with the man she obviously cared about so deeply, was inescapably heartwarming.

                "French braid," Parker was saying as Morgan approached the couch.

                "French fries," said Hardison.

                "French doors."

                "French dressing."

                "French… uh… ooh! French toast!"

                "French horn."

                Parker opened her mouth, presumably to divulge something else "French," but instead she beamed at seeing Morgan. "Morgan! I didn't know you were still here. Come play with us!"

                Morgan paused behind the sofa. She looked down at the stack of reports and shook her head. "Uh… thanks, but I've got to get these over to the embassy so they're on Dave's desk first thing."

                Parker waved her hand in an exaggerated, dismissive gesture. "Take them tomorrow! I thought you liked making Dave angry."

                "It's almost nine-thirty on a Sunday," said Hardison. He craned his neck to look over the back of the couch. "You usually work late on weekends?"

                "It... depends," said Morgan, glancing at the floor-to-ceiling windows that made up the wall faced by the living room furniture. Someone had pulled back the curtains, and through the glass the remnants of sunset color backlit the Paris skyline and lights had begun to twinkle in windows like fireflies in a field. Something in Morgan's stomach knotted a little at the comparison, evoking images of summer nights spent back across the Atlantic, sitting on her parents' porch in Maryland before she'd joined the Agency…

                _Nope. Not going there._

                "I need to get some rest, anyway," she said, dispelling the memories.

                "Are you going back to that hostel?" Parker asked. "The one we stayed in together?"

                "No, I've got a place. An extended stay hotel room."

                "Because you could stay here again, if you wanted."

                Morgan couldn't help a small smile at the offer. Every once in a while, she had to remind herself that this perky, blonde woman was Parker - _the_ Parker - and that under any other circumstances, they would have been playing for very different sides. "Thanks," she said, and she meant it. "But I'm good."

                Parker nodded and shrugged. "Okay. See you tomorrow!" She gave a little wave before turning back to Hardison, her smile growing. "French maid."

                The hacker's voice followed Morgan as she headed around the corner to the suite's private lift access: "Now that just ain't fair."

                She'd just summoned the elevator when another voice, this one deep and gravelly, said, "Where do you think you're going?" and Eliot Spencer stepped out of the shadows of the kitchen, wiping his hands on a dish towel in a startlingly menacing way.

                A jolt of adrenaline shot through her. This was how her nightmares often started - the ones where Spencer cornered her, gave a short monologue about how she should have thought twice before duping his crew, and broke her neck with a flick of his wrist.

                But she forced her breathing to stay steady and just raised her eyebrows. "Home."

                In a tone that suggested he didn't believe her, he repeated, "Home." His unblinking gaze was piercing - creepy and scary as hell.

                She slowly looked back at the elevator door.  "Yeah. You guys are great and all, but I already spent one night with you people, and I'd really like a moment to myself and to not sleep on a couch."

                In her peripheral vision, she saw him shake his head. "No. I'm not taking that security risk."

                "Look, Spencer, I'm a big girl. I think I can take care of my - "

                "I don't give a rip about you," he said in a casual, matter-of-fact way. "But if you think I'm going to give you an opportunity to screw us - "

                "Screw you?" The uneasiness brought on by Spencer's sinister mannerisms faded in the face of a jolt of anger. "I've done nothing but help you."

                "Only because it's benefitted you until now. And if there's one thing you can count on the CIA to do, it's to turn on you as soon as you've worn out your usefulness."

                Something about the way he delivered that statement hinted at something… personal, like Spencer had himself been burned by the Agency in some way. Morgan had never seen his name come up in any files beyond those that documented his criminal exploits, but the idea that he might have done some off-the-books or Black Ops work for the CIA wasn't beyond the realm of possibility.

 _Calm down, Mo. He's provoking you deliberately. Don't rise to the bait._ "I'm sorry you feel that way," she returned in a casual tone to match his. "But I'm not even here in an Agency capacity."

                "So you've said."

                The elevator arrived, its doors opening like a cavernous mouth. Morgan made a move to get in, but one of Spencer's arms shot out to block her progress.

                She took a calm, deep breath. "Get out of my way."

                He stepped closer, and as he did his voice dropped in volume. "Until this job is over, you don't go anywhere by yourself."

                "Oh, you mean like this afternoon," she said, eyes narrowing. "When I went back to the embassy all by my lonesome and you didn't say anything?"

                He smirked. It hadn't been the expression she'd been expecting, which only made it more unsettling. "If that's what you think," he said, "then I'm surprised you've lasted this long in the intelligence business."

                _Son of a…_

                "Ah," she said. "What, you didn't trust Hardison to keep track of me with traffic cameras?"

                "I don't trust you to stay _on_ the traffic cameras."

                Morgan snorted. "As creepy a stalker as you are, I'm vaguely flattered."

                "Don't be."

                Spencer's strikingly blue eyes were cold, like chips of ice set into a face of stone. Morgan stared into them as the elevator doors closed, maintaining a removed, uninterested expression on her own features while she considered her next move.

                All of the members of the Leverage team had criminal records - even the once-upstanding Nathan Ford after he'd assembled his crew. But one of them, the man close enough to Morgan that they were breathing the same air, had far darker stains to his name than the others. The things that Eliot Spencer was known to have done in his lifetime - much less the things he was only suspected of doing - were so dark that when Morgan had been presented with his file back at the Farm, she hadn't been able to finish it, and she'd needed a nice, long run to clear her head after even that incomplete read. Spencer had bounties on his head in at least three different countries, and countless life sentences waiting for him in others. After seeing what he'd done to that pickpocket, no nightmare about him seemed too far-fetched.

                If anyone else from Ford's team had been blocking her exit, Morgan would have somehow dealt with them and left. But those people were only human… Eliot Spencer couldn't possibly be a man anymore.

                Out of pragmatism and, admittedly, a little fear, she said, "All right. Fine. I'll stay for the sleepover. We going to braid each other's hair?"

                The chill remained in Spencer's gaze, and he just regarded her evenly, though a muscle on his jaw twitched in possible irritation. Finally, he took a step back and gestured into the suite.

                "What a gentleman," Morgan muttered as she passed him.

                She set her stack of reports and forged transcripts on the dining room table, next to Hardison's little improvised computer lab at the far end. What that guy was able to achieve with a laptop, netbook, tablet, and smartphone was incredible. Even now, the laptop's display was running through pages and pages of code that could have been Egyptian hieroglyphics for all the sense they made to Morgan's eye. The netbook's screen, too, was still alive, featuring a control board for the comm channel feeds connected to the next-generation earbuds used by the team. Ford's and Devereaux's lines were still lit up; the grifter was finishing what had turned into dinner and a walk with McMaster, and Ford had left to keep tabs on them.

                Morgan had thought Ford's insistence that he be the one to continue handling Devereaux, rather than the team's obvious security in Spencer, had been a little strange. But that had been before the revelation that Spencer was already dealing with a potential security risk: her.

                "All right," she sighed as she walked back into the living room. "What's the game? Just saying things with 'French'… in them…?" She trailed off. Parker and Hardison had disappeared.

                Wait, no they hadn't.

                A giggle came from the couch where they'd been sitting, and Parker's head popped up to be visible over the backrest. Her cheeks were a little pink. "You didn’t leave!" she said.

                Morgan blinked as Hardison also appeared again, sitting up and looking very pleased.

                Dammit, she'd interrupted something, hadn't she?

                "Uh…" she started. Had they been making out this whole time? Should she apologize?

                She didn't get a chance to decide, though, because Spencer came over then, rolling his eyes. "Really?" he said. "Right out here in the middle of everything? Get a room."

                Parker and Hardison exchanged somewhat guilty, if also conspiratorial, looks.

                _I'm going to get murdered,_ thought Morgan, but she said, for Parker's sake: "What, Spencer, you jealous?"

                Spencer's deadly glare was almost immediately interrupted by snorting snickers from the couch. By the time he turned the glare on the couple, it had actually softened somehow.

                "Hey, she figured it out, Eliot!" said Hardison with an enormous, taunting smile. "That explains everything."

                Parker smiled, too, but there was a hint of something else there - something cautious and sad - as she folded her arms on the back of the couch and rested her chin on them, gazing up at Spencer. "That's why you're such a grumpasaurus lately, huh?" she asked.

                Morgan knew the question wasn't a serious one; it was, like Hardison's statement, obviously a joke. But Parker's expression revealed that it was also an olive branch of sorts, a moment of normal banter in spite of the hurt that had haunted her eyes whenever she'd interacted with Spencer over the past few days.

                And maybe… maybe Spencer actually saw that, too.

                The hitter rolled his eyes. "Grumpasaurus?" he muttered, but without a trace of venom. "Seriously?"

                "It's a very distinctive dinosaur," said Parker.

                Hardison laughed quietly and glanced at Spencer. The two men made eye contact, and something unspoken passed between them. Whatever it was, it visibly released some of the tension in Hardison's shoulders and had Spencer looking back at Parker with a hint of a smirk. Unlike the cold, dangerous smile he'd flashed at Morgan only minutes ago, this one was cocky and easy… actually the most human thing that Morgan had seen him do since meeting him in the Portland brew pub.

                "Very funny," he said to the thief, holding eye contact with her, too, for a drawn out second.

                Parker sat up and vaulted over the back of the couch with the grace of a large cat. She was grinning now, the wary sadness suddenly nowhere to be seen. For a second, Morgan thought the thief was going to hug Spencer - the very idea of which created a sort of cognitive dissonance - but Parker ended up just perching herself there on top of the backrest, perfectly balanced and perfectly at ease.

                What exactly had just happened? Were these three… okay now?

                "So, you decided to stay?" Parker said, interrupting Morgan's confusion.

                It took a couple of blinks to realize Parker had been talking to her, but then Morgan's conversational instincts took over. "Mmm… 'decided' is a strong word…"

                "Eliot give you the old security threat spiel?" asked Hardison.

                Spencer grunted. "I don't have a spiel, Hardison."

                Parker and Hardison both dissolved into laughter again.

                "What?" growled Spencer, eyes slits. But, again, there wasn't heavy subtext in his tone. In fact, if Morgan hadn't known that this was Eliot Spencer, she might have even identified a hint of complacent… playfulness there.

                Was this really the same man who had just cornered her? The man whose file she hadn't been able to finish?

                "Oh please," said Hardison. "All you got is spiels. Let's see… Eliot Spencer in a nutshell: That's a very distinctive - "

                "Anything?" finished Parker.

                Hardison looked pleased that Parker had decided to chime in. "And every time it's like, 'No time for that. That'll take three weeks.'"

                "But it takes three minutes?"

                The thief and hacker high-fived.

                "Oooh, ooh," said Parker. "Can't forget 'Dammit, Hardison!'"

                "Not exactly a spiel, but I'm liking the enthusiasm." Hardison winked. "Oh, and one of my personal favorites, the 'I dated a…' explanation."

                "I'm sorry," said Morgan, trying to stifle a sudden laugh. "The what?" Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Spencer cross his arms and glower. Apparently the "grumpasaurus" hadn't totally left the building. But he didn't seem _quite_ so threatening now that Parker and Hardison were mercilessly making fun of him. The comfort with which they goaded him was infectious. Clearly this was a routine they'd gone through before, and it seemed to cut through any remnants of the heaviness that had hovered amidst the trio since Morgan had first gotten into the van to Seattle with them.

                Parker's eyebrows wiggled on her forehead as she said with her voice pitched hilariously low, "Oh yeah. Eliot and the ladies. Eliot loves the ladies."

                "All kinds of ladies," said Hardison. "Flight attendants - "

                " - neurologists - "

                " - policewomen - "

                Parker made air quotes with her fingers. "Lots of models."

                "Sounds like a bingo card," deadpanned Morgan.

                Hardison's eyes widened in mischievous glee and he pointed a finger at her. "You are growing on me by the minute."

                Spencer muttered something under his breath, pinching the bridge of his nose. It sounded a little bit like, "I'm going to check on Nate and Sophie," but when he retreated it was all the way into the kitchen, ignoring the netbook with the comm feeds.

                "Oh! Eliot!" Parker called after him. "Bake some cookies for our sleepover!"

                "No, Parker," said the voice of Nathan Ford, and he and Devereaux emerged from around the corner where the elevator was. "No cookies this late."

                Devereaux gave Ford a subtle elbow in the ribs.

                "Eh…" Ford tried again, glancing at the grifter. "That is, unless you… you know, unless you usually have sugar-filled late-night snacks."

                "Every day," said Parker with an impish grin at the same time that Spencer's voice from the kitchen said, "Never, Nate. Don't let her con you."

                Hardison chuckled.

                A combination of emotions - including the same sort of relieved confusion that Morgan was herself feeling - passed over Devereaux's face before she smoothed it back into a more neutral expression. "So, we're having a sleepover, are we?"

                "Yeah," said Parker as she literally skipped across the suite to Ford and Devereaux. "Everyone should go change into their pajamas."

                "That won't be necessary," Ford said quickly.

                "I've never had a real sleepover before," said Parker, beaming. "We can braid each other's hair!"

                 "Right?" said Morgan with a wink at Hardison. "You know, Spencer was suggesting that earlier…"

                The kitchen released an ominous growl.

                Devereaux followed the growl to its source. "Are you actually making something to eat in here, Eliot? Because I'm famished."

                "Didn't you just get back from dinner?" came the reply.

                "You know, it's very difficult to be scintillating while consuming a meal. Couldn't you just whip me up something?"

                "All of us," insisted Parker, going to join the kitchen discussion. "Make us all something." She poked her head back out to flash Morgan a grin. "You can try Eliot's cooking! It's the best."

                "Or we could just order room service," said Ford.

                "Yeah, uh, that reminds me," said Hardison, raising an eyebrow at Ford. "When I called down for something earlier, they asked me if I wanted to try their Couples Candlelight Special."

                Ford raised an eyebrow back. "And?"

                "And they asked if my _husband_ and I would like to share it."

                Devereaux was the first to crack. It began as a bout of giggles as she came back out of the kitchen to share a knowing look with Ford. Then he snorted and began to laugh, too.

                "Wait a second," said Spencer, following Devereaux. He had that dish towel again, twisting it in his hands like he might use it to strangle someone. "That's what you told the clerk downstairs? That Hardison and I - that we - me and _Hardison_?"

                Devereaux lost it. She burst into laughter - real, full-bodied laughter.

                "Aw, don't be like that, hubby," said Hardison, spreading his arms. "Come over here and give me a kiss - "

                "I'll give you a black eye is what I'll give you - "

                Parker was laughing now, too. Morgan even realized that she herself had joined in, though she tried to hide it with a hand over her mouth.

                And she finally understood.

                Devereaux's unbridled mirth was what made things click, explained everything that had happened in the last ten minutes. What could make Sophie Devereaux, a woman almost completely in control of her emotions at any given moment, laugh like no one was watching? A little lie about Spencer and Hardison being a couple was funny, sure, but not _that_ funny.

                The answer was the same thing that had prompted Parker and Hardison to joke with Spencer, that had just chased away the heavy darkness that had hung over the entire Leverage team since their tense reunion in the hotel lobby:

                These people were family.

                There were still unresolved issues between them - large ones, if Morgan had correctly read all of the nonverbal signals they'd sent to one another since Friday - but the bonds that held them together were clearly stronger. They'd spent days frustrated and angry with each another, and holding grudges like that was exhausting. Now, all five of them had reached the limits of their energy to keep it up, to let those resentments trump their obvious relief and joy at being together. Morgan still wasn't clear on what exactly had split their crew in the first place, but they'd all wanted a reunion; it was written in the easy patterns that they were all so naturally falling into now.

                This wouldn't last forever… all of those issues would need to be dealt with, one way or another, and the time would come for that. But that time wasn't right now.

                For the moment, they'd pressed the "pause" button, and no one was making a move to press "play."

                Parker crept up on Spencer and draped an arm around his shoulder. "I'm thinking… pancakes?"

                Hardison raised a hand. "I second."

                Devereaux, getting hold of herself, said, "Oh, and an omelet for me. If I just eat sugar I'll feel awful."

                For once, Ford smiled without a hint of irony. Well… not _much_ irony, anyway. "Breakfast for dinner… what do you say, Eliot?"

                 Spencer glanced at each member of his team with that same sort of… soft grumpiness as he'd shown when Parker and Hardison had been taking shots at him. "Yeah, all right," he finally said, and gave Parker a completely unthreatening glare. "You gonna let me get started, or what?"

                The thief's grin nearly split her face, but she released him.

                It briefly crossed Morgan's mind that right this minute she could probably slip out of the suite unnoticed, go back to her own hotel room and take a shower, put on comfy clothes… sleep in a bed. Everyone appeared to have forgotten that she was even here, and there didn't seem to be much chance of them discussing the McMaster con anytime soon. Breakfast for dinner was taking clear precedence.

                But something about the prospect of seeing these people the way they used to be, the way they must have been when they'd garnered an international reputation as a crew, kept her where she was.

                That and the fact that Spencer would eventually realize that she'd left, and she was rather partial to all her fingers and toes.

                Plus, who could say no to pancakes?


	21. Chapter 21

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the two weeks off! But here's the longest chapter yet to make it up to you.
> 
> If you don't get the reference at the beginning (like Hardison), might I point you toward the headcanon that is Ginipig's "The External Contractor Job (Or, The IYS Job)."

                "Nice place," muttered Eliot, casting a long, skeptical glance around the location Nate had chosen for the first meet with Carson McMaster: a poorly-lit corner of an underground parking lot. The lot was essentially empty this late on a Monday night.

                Nate, standing next to him with crossed arms, smirked and shrugged. "What, you don't like it? I thought it was a little nostalgic."

                "Seriously. What's with you and parking garages?"

                "What are you guys even talking about?" said Hardison's voice on comms. He, Parker, Sophie, and Gray were one level down in a rented van that the hacker was calling "Lucille's French Cousin."

                "Oh nothing," said Nate in that too-light, flippant tone he often favored for sarcasm. "Eliot and I just have an ongoing disagreement about who gets to be Deep Throat."

                Someone on the comm channel snorted out a laugh; it sounded like Gray.

                "Thanks for that incredibly detailed explanation," deadpanned Hardison. "Because that really clears it up."

                "Okay, everyone in position?" said Parker's voice. With Nate here in a grifting capacity, they'd all agreed to formally defer to her as the quarterback for this leg of the con. "It's almost time."

                "Three minutes," said Sophie. "And Morgan said he's punctual."

                Before Gray could answer, Parker butted in again. "Hey, Morgan! Sophie called you by your first name! She must like you."

                "Oh, what's in a name?" said Sophie much more warmly than Eliot would have liked.

                "Not much, apparently," Hardison said. "Since Nate's still calling _you_ Sophie."

                "Yeah, see, Sophie isn't Sophie's real name," said Parker, and Eliot knew she was, yet again, talking to Gray. Parker's constant explanations to the CIA officer about the team's interactions had only increased in frequency since last night's "breakfast for dinner" ceasefire. The amount of information she was revealing to Gray was crossing the line from irritating to seriously problematic at this point.

                "Parker…" he began, warning in his voice.

                "I actually knew that," said Gray, not letting him finish. "Isn't it - "

                Now Sophie was the one to interrupt. "Nate and I talked about it a few times, and we decided that… well, Sophie may not be the woman I used to be, but she is the woman I am now, isn't she? She's the one Nate fell in love with."

                Eliot glanced sideways at Nate, whose poker face was slowly being ruined by a hint of rising color in his cheeks. If Nate's inability to control that subconscious reaction hadn't been so damn dangerous in a situation like this, Eliot probably would have given him grief for it. Right now, though, all he could think about was how a slip like that might blow the entire con. The last thing they needed right now was for Nate to be rusty.

                "Nate," he said.

                The mastermind blinked, met Eliot's gaze, and cleared his throat. "All right, let's cut the chit-chat. McMaster will be here any second."

                "Hardison?" said Parker.

                The hacker's keyboard clicked a few times. "Yup, there he is. Camera at the entrance just picked him up."

                "Hey, Nate?"

                Nate raised an eyebrow. "Yes, Parker?"

                "You should say something dramatic now."

                "Dramatic?"

                "Yeah, like, 'Showtime!' or something. Like old times."

                Old times. Yes, the past twelve hours _had_ been a bit of a throwback. Sunday evening had been a moment out of time, with everyone, including Eliot, falling back into old patterns for the night. From Parker and Hardison's tag-team teasing to the late breakfast feast Eliot had prepared for them all, it had been a nostalgic reprieve. Instead of sitting through another stint of frigid silence or arguing about the job, they had actually laughed and swapped stories. Nate and Sophie recounted their lazy, month-long cruise around the Mediterranean on Nate's boat and described Sophie's London flat that they'd recently begun to renovate.

                It had been the kind of reunion they'd all probably envisioned that night in the brew pub when Nate had announced that he and Sophie were leaving the game: funny, charming, and delicious. Hearing about Nate and Sophie's attempt at domesticity - selecting furniture for their flat, putting out a fire Sophie had started with a toaster, buying tickets for upcoming openings of West End theatre productions - had been almost comic in its contrast to the lives they'd used to lead. The former mastermind and grifter of the world's best crew were clearly well-suited to ordinary living in many ways, but there had also been a piece of each of them that had missed what they'd left behind - including the team. Maybe _especially_ the team.

                "You don't know how many times I picked up the phone to tell you about something," Sophie had said as she'd refilled everyone's wine glasses without having been asked. "But…" She'd looked at Nate, and they had a silent exchange before she continued. "We didn't want you to think we were checking up on you because we weren't confident in you. Of course we were."

                Parker, swallowing an enormous bite of pancake, had replied, "And we didn't call you because we didn't want you to think we couldn't do it…"

                Well, that had been why Parker and Hardison hadn't called, maybe. But Eliot hadn't voiced his… more complex reasons.              

                Eliot had caught himself smiling and laughing more than he'd expected to. He'd missed these people - including Parker and Hardison, who for the night glowed with some of the youthful frivolity that had drained from their relationship since the team had gone from five to three. Being with them all now, it was almost as if Nate and Sophie had never left.

                Yet, as natural as being with them all felt, Eliot was yanked back to reality whenever his eyes fell on Morgan Gray. The odd one out, she smiled and laughed along with the flow of conversation, even though none of it applied to her, grifting her way into the background until everyone seemed to forget she was even there.

                 But Eliot never forgot about her. Gray was a constant reminder that this suspended evening in Paris didn't turn back the clock - it only paused it for a while. They were doing this job in the first place because everything had gone wrong. Nate and Sophie weren't here to rejoin the team; they were here to bail the team out. Once they left again, the reality of the broken team would come crashing back down.

                And that meant Eliot's intention to leave hadn't changed, either. The past three months had proven that the trio version of the team wasn't enough, and that failed cons were more than just disappointments - they were dangerous. The only rational, safe course of action was to follow Nate and Sophie's lead and go their separate ways. Yet Parker and Hardison continued to insist that things would work out, and maybe they'd been secretly hoping that Nate and Sophie would return. But all the pancakes in the world didn't change the face that the mastermind and grifter were _out_. They were out, and, dammit, they deserved to be.

                The Leverage team's time in the sun was over. And if Parker and Hardison weren't going to listen to reason, Eliot's leaving was the only way to force their hand.

                He knew that they would hate him for it at first. But at least they'd be safe.

                "All right," said Nate, bringing Eliot's attention back to the present. He was watching an approaching black sedan: McMaster. "Showtime."

                "Yessss!" Parker stage whispered.

                Eliot rolled his eyes, but a smile touched his mouth, too. Even if he was the only one thinking about the fallout once they nailed this guy, it _was_ nice for things to be a little familiar.

                _Enjoy it while it lasts_.

                The sedan pulled into a spot maybe twenty feet away, and its driver emerged, walking over to Eliot and Nate's shadowy corner. McMaster was tall and blond, with the kind of pretty-boy face that Eliot would have liked to ugly up a bit, and his eyes darted around in the same exit-checking pattern that Nate had noticed Gray using when he'd first met her in the hotel lobby.

                "Mr. McMaster?" said Nate, pitching his voice a little higher than normal and playing up his Boston speech tics.

                McMaster smiled. His perfectly straight, white teeth seemed to glow a little in the dim light. "You must be Mr. Gill," he said, extending a hand. "Thank you for agreeing to meet with me."

                Nate tipped his head to one side before shaking the outstretched hand. "I don't usually take references from new clients like Ms. Copeland, but you were… eh… rather convincing on the phone this morning."

                "I am a diplomat, Mr. Gill. I wouldn't be very good at my job if I couldn't convince someone of something."

                "What did I tell you?" Sophie murmured. "Dangerous."

                "More like smarmy," said Hardison. "Smarmy as hell. Here's an idea… let's take this guy down."

                "Shhh," said Parker. "Let Nate talk."

                Eliot kept his eyebrows from rising. The thief was actually doing a good job on point today.

                Nate smiled with closed lips. "Quite. Yes, well, why don't we get straight to business? You need a financial manager. I'm a financial manager. Let's talk goals and accounts."

                "Just a minute," said McMaster. He held up a finger, and for the first time he looked at Eliot. "Who's your associate?"

                "This is Stephan," said Nate easily. "My bodyguard."

                McMaster's eyes narrowed just slightly. He smiled again, but his gaze didn't waver from Eliot's. "Bodyguard," he repeated.

                "Mr. McMaster, I don't think I need to tell you that I know some dangerous people," Nate said. "Stephan makes sure that those people and I can continue doing business without any… misunderstanding."

                Nodding slowly, McMaster finally looked away, returning his attention to Nate. "I trust that you and I won't have any misunderstandings."

                "If we do, you should know that I don't really adhere to the 'customer is always right' mentality."

                The quip seemed to put McMaster back at ease; the man chuckled and nodded. "Fair enough. To business, then." He reached into his jacket, pulling out a folded sheet of paper that he then handed to Nate. "Let's start small, shall we? I don't know you. You don't know me… so let's get to know each other. This is an account of mine in the Caymans. I want to see what you can do with it. I'll give you, say, a month? And if I like what I see, we can discuss a partnership moving forward."

                Hardison made a choking sound, like he'd just inhaled some of that Fanta that Parker had stuffed in every available part of the hotel suite's refrigerator. "Wait, what? A month trial period? I just took away this dude's money guy, on the eve of his biggest score ever. When this attack happens, he stands to make millions, and I mean _millions_ by betting against the market. He should be begging you to manage all of his accounts, like, yesterday."

                "Maybe he already found someone else?" suggested Sophie.

                "When? We've had tabs on him since Saturday," said Parker. "Nate, you have to find out what's going on."

                Nate cleared his throat. Then he began to laugh one of those crazy character laughs that he was way too good at. "A month?" he said, the laugh tapering to a chortle. "With one account? Mr. McMaster." Abruptly, his tone went from jovial to biting. "I don't agree to midnight meetings to play around in your daughter's kiddie pool savings account. If you want to do business, then we do business. I'm either your man, or I'm not." The last word Nate punctuated by flicking the piece of paper out of his hand, and he stared down McMaster as it fluttered to the ground.

                McMaster stared coolly back. "I don't know you."

                "And I don't know you." Nate shoved a finger in the man's face. "And the longer I stand here, the more this stinks. I wasn't born yesterday, pal." He glanced at Eliot. "Stephan, we're leaving."

                "Nate," came Sophie's warning voice. "Don't push him too hard."

                "Boss…" Eliot began. "We don't want a misunderstanding."

                Nate gave a heavy sigh and opened his mouth to say something else, but McMaster beat him to it, blinking and looking back at Eliot.

                "Southwest?" he asked.

                "... I'm sorry, sir?"

                "Your accent… Texas?"

                What the hell was this? Nate was about to walk away and this guy wanted to know about Eliot's _accent?_ "Something like that."

                "Hm." McMaster paused before turning back to Nate. "All right, fine. I'll tell you what. Let me make a call, and then we'll see about renegotiating." Before Nate could respond, he pulled a phone out of his jacket and took a few steps away, dialing and putting it to his ear.

                Over the comms came a sharp intake of breath. Suddenly Gray said, "Get out. Something's wrong. Get out of there!"

                "What?" said an incredulous Hardison.

                "His voice. Something's changed. Do _not_ let him make that call."

                "Are you sure - " Sophie started, but Parker cut her off.

                "Guys, you heard her! Move!"

                Nate and Eliot exchanged a split-second look loaded with confusion and frustration, but Eliot did, in fact, move. Parker was, without ambiguity this time, the one calling the plays.

                He reached McMaster with three long strides, fluidly moving from the third into grabbing McMaster's wrist in a vice-like grip and twisting the man's arm behind him. With a grunt of pain, McMaster dropped the phone, and Eliot forced him to his knees with a foot in the lower back.

                "Ah," said McMaster through clenched teeth. "So this is what it feels like."

                "And what's that, Mr. McMaster?" asked Nate. He was still using his con voice.

                McMaster half sneered, half winced. "To be immobilized by the great Eliot Spencer."

                Shock pulsed through Eliot's body. _Eliot Spencer_. Damn it… How the hell did McMaster know him?

                He wrenched the CIA station chief's arm a little harder, eliciting a small cry of pain. But the sound didn't distract Eliot from the slow movement of McMaster's other hand toward his ribcage. Within the space of a breath that arm was also trapped in Eliot's hold.

                "Grab his gun," he told Nate. "Holster on his left."

                Nate did as he was told, hurrying over to crouch and unsnap a 9mm Browning Hi-Power pistol from under McMaster's jacket, which he tossed a few yards away. But he didn't get up. He stared into McMaster's face.

                "Stay committed, Nate," said Sophie. "Someone recognizing Eliot doesn't mean we're blown. I sold him being my bodyguard to the _Milieu_ not three days ago."

                Nate gave a little grunt of acknowledgement and said, still in character, "You'll have to excuse Mr. Spencer. He doesn't typically like to be identified as working for any particular client."

                Eliot couldn't see McMaster's smirk, but he could hear it in his voice. "Oh, don't feed me that bull, Mr. Ford. I know exactly who Eliot Spencer works for."

                Sophie and Parker gasped, Morgan Gray swore, and Hardison said, "Yeah, I guess _that_ means we're blown. Son of a frickin' bitch."

                Nate scowled. "So," he said as he stood, the accent - but not the con - gone from his voice. He was still trying to salvage this. "You know who we are. That doesn't have to change our deal."

                "Oh, please," spat McMaster. "What deal? You're a con man trying to trick me out of my money. And you almost had me, too. Faith Copeland… hell, that was Sophie damn Devereaux, wasn't it? And, let me guess… you've got Parker and Alec Hardison probably sitting around the corner, don't you?" McMaster began laughing, but it turned into a strangled yelp as Eliot stomped on his ankle.

                "Nate…" said Parker, her tone strained. "How does he know about us?"

                "Oh God," said Gray in a voice so small that it took Eliot a second to even realize it was hers.

                "'Oh God,' what?" growled Eliot. "How does he know, Gray? How the fu - "

                "Gray?" murmured McMaster, and some of that audible smirk was back. "Not… Morgan Gray? Oh… this does get better and better."

                "Eliot!" cried Parker. "You just blew Morgan!"

                Eliot's stomach dropped as he realized she was right; he'd said Gray's name. But his anger was hotter than that small flare of guilt. "Blew _her_? Ask her how the hell this guy knows who we are!"

                He expected some response from Gray at that, something flat and combative like, "Ask _her_ your damn self." But the CIA officer was silent.

                "Uh, guys," interjected Hardison. "Hold up for - for just a sec… we've got some more guests."

                "What?" Nate demanded.

                "The cameras just picked up another vehicle entering the garage. Y'all about to have some company."

                Rage surged through Eliot, but he tried to force it down and focus on what Hardison had just said instead of what Gray had said. "What kind of vehicle? How many people?"

                "Black SUV. Seriously tinted windows, so I can't tell how many might be inside."

                For a second, Eliot was no longer in the parking garage; he was back in McMaster's apartment, looking outside for an approaching response to the motion sensor he'd set off. A black SUV with tinted windows… a strange car for the heart of Paris, especially without diplomatic or government plates… he'd seen one parked on the street, thinking it was a private security team. But it hadn't been. McMaster had come alone.

                There were a lot of things Eliot had stopped believing in over the course of his career. Coincidence was one of them.

                He jerked up on McMaster's arms, forcing the man to his feet, and spun them both around so that McMaster faced the entrance to their floor of the garage. "Nate, grab the phone and the gun."

                Now that he had some leverage back, McMaster began struggling against Eliot's hold. In response, Eliot slammed the other man face-first into a concrete support column. The impact generated a cracking sound, almost certainly from McMaster's nose breaking, and a smear of blood was left on the rough surface. The resistance subsided, but McMaster shot Eliot a withering look over his shoulder.

                "You'll live," Eliot muttered, smirking a little.

                Five seconds later, the SUV appeared, coming slowly down the ramp from aboveground into the empty garage. It rolled to a stop maybe thirty feet away, keeping its bright headlights on. Eliot instinctively lowered his gaze to avoid being blinded by the glare, while Nate held up a hand against it and squinted.

                He heard both of the SUV's front doors open, and then the first bullet whizzed just wide of Eliot and his human shield. Fortunately, before his brain even had time to process the shot, his muscles were reacting. He yanked McMaster with him behind the nearby column as two more bullets dug into the wall behind where they'd just been standing.

                A thrill of fear seized Eliot once they were safe, and he wondered whether Nate had been so quick, but the fear subsided at the sound of heavy breathing in the earbud. A glance around the column revealed Nate hunched behind McMaster's sedan.

                "Nate?" came Sophie's breathless, terrified voice in his earbud. "Eliot?"

                "Yeah, Soph," Eliot said. "We're here."

                "Nate?"

                "I'm fine, honey," Nate coughed. "But I think, from now on, I'm going to leave the stunt double stuff to Eliot…"

                "Yeah, well, you may have to wait a little longer for that," Eliot said, peering around the column again. Behind the headlights, he thought he could see four silhouettes, but he couldn't be sure. "I'm going to need you to lay down some cover fire."

                "Cover fire? Eliot, I wouldn't know the first thing about - "

                "Just shoot toward the light and count to ten. Then shoot and count again. Don't empty the clip too fast, but keep anyone from coming toward us. Don't worry. If you do this right, no one's going to get hurt. I just need time."

                "Time?"

                "Nate."

                Nate swallowed. "All right, then." After a moment, the Browning went off,  joining the cacophony of gunshots coming from the SUV.

                Eliot's brain shifted to the next tactical move. "Hardison? You there?"

                "Yeah, man."

                "Listen. These guys have us pinned down with their brights on… I can't see anything, and we're sitting ducks. I need you to bring the van up to our level. The SUV is parked about halfway down the straight part of the ramp, so there's plenty of room for you to come up and around the corner. Keep the lights off until the last possible second, so you only blind the other guys, but give it all you've got once you're facing them. Can you do that?"

                "Um, yeah. Sure thing. I'll - "

                "I'll do it," interrupted Parker.

                Hardison made a small squeaking sound. "Uh - "

                "We need to do this fast. Right, Eliot?"

                Despite the situation, Eliot felt a small smile on his lips. "Damn right."

                "Roger that, Sparky. Hardison, move over."

                "Wha - I - ow! Woman!"

                "I told you to move over."

                "Morgan," said Sophie. "You're going to want to… buckle your seatbelt."

                As Nate fired harmless shots at ten second intervals - answered by rapid fire from the SUV - and the rest of the team audibly shuffled around in Lucille's French Cousin, Eliot returned his attention to the man in his hold. He forced McMaster to his knees again and wrapped an arm around his neck, applying gradual pressure.

                "You've maybe got until the next time Nate Ford fires your gun before you black out," he said in McMaster's ear. "Unless you talk. How many men are out there? Who else is coming?"

                But McMaster just chuckled. Or, he choked, but it was clearly intended as laughter. "You marshal your troops well, Spencer. You were a soldier once…" He hacked out a cough. "For your country… then for San Lorenzo…"

                The tension that shot through Eliot at the mention of San Lorenzo tightened his hold on McMaster's windpipe so suddenly that the other man gagged and started flailing. It took actual concentration for Eliot to convince the bicep to release. McMaster gulped air as it became available to him again.

                "How do you know all of this?" snarled Eliot. "What do you know about my team?"

                For the first time, McMaster's cocky veneer was beginning to crack. As his breathing normalized, his eyes widened at Eliot's face next to his, though he quickly set his jaw again. "Do you know who I am?" he said hoarsely. "What I can have done to you?"

                It hit Eliot all at once - what it was about Carson McMaster that made him want to beat the guy to within an inch of his life.

                Cocky, smug, handsome, dangerous…

                _San Lorenzo._

                This bastard was just like Damien Moreau.

                Not as sadistic, obviously - no one was as bad as Moreau. But the cold, cruel aloofness that allowed McMaster to profit off of disasters and terrorist attacks reeked of Moreau. And the two had actually been associated in the past - hadn't Hardison had brought that up at the briefing? Now that made perfect sense. This man and Moreau must have been a match made in hell.

                Eliot's teeth clenched until they hurt, and he let his arm clench again, too. In a matter of seconds, McMaster was out cold.

                "Woooooo hooooo!"

                Parker's exuberant whoop of unbridled joy over comms, coupled with squealing tires from further down in the garage, signaled Lucille's French Cousin's arrival to the party. Moments later, the burgundy van violently peeled around the corner, teetering on its suspension like it might roll over if someone so much as breathed in its direction. Somehow Parker managed to keep the vehicle upright, though, and as voices behind the headlights of the SUV began yelling to one another, she straightened out the van and flipped on its brights.

                "We be the cavalry!" shouted the thief with a maniacal laugh.

                Eliot couldn't see through the van's tinted windows any more than he could the SUV's, but he could definitely picture the looks of awed terror Sophie, Hardison, and Gray undoubtedly wore just then.

                "Parker," he said with urgency. "Get out of the front seat. They'll start to divide their fire between you and Nate now."

                Parker's response was almost sing-songy. "On it!" That woman and adrenaline…

                "Hardison?"

                "Still here, E. With all my fingers and toes… thank sweet baby Jesus…"

                "Yeah. Great. Use those fingers to open the van's back door. I'm bringing McMaster to you."

                "Wait, _what?_ "

                "Hardison! We don't have time for this. I can't get close to these guys while dragging a hostage."

                "Well what are _we_ supposed to do with him?"

                "Just watch him."

                "Eliot, what the hell does - "

                Eliot ignored the hacker's continued protests and burst from behind the column, dragging McMaster's tall frame behind him across the eight foot-wide stretch of open space to the van. Though the men from the SUV did fire once or twice in his direction, they were clearly just as blinded by the flood of headlights as the team was.

                Hardison was waiting with both of the back doors open, his eyes wide and alert. "Seriously, how are we supposed to - Uh… is he unconscious?"

                Ignoring the question, Eliot heaved the limp man's form into the van. "Tie him up."

                "With what?"

                "You're the frickin' genius. Figure it out!"

                Hardison threw up his hands, but Parker, crawling past Sophie, started rummaging around in a gear bag and pulled out one of her harnesses. "Here," she said to Hardison. "Roll him over."

                Eliot was about to leave them to it when he spotted the woman sitting across from Sophie, hunched over with her face in her hands. Gray's body language said it all: somehow it was her fault that they'd been made.

                _I'll deal with you later_ , he thought darkly.

                "Uh, Eliot?" It was Nate. "I'm out of bullets."

                _Damn_. If Nate was out of ammo, that left a maximum of ten seconds for Eliot to get behind the SUV's headlights before someone got cocky and moved in on the mastermind's hiding place.

                "All right. Stay where you are," he told Nate, closing his eyes and ducking around the side of the van, creeping along its length. He stayed crouched until he reached the front, feeling for the smooth surface of the headlight and pausing right next to it so that he would be essentially invisible to anyone facing the van.

                There wasn't time to think about what he was doing; no matter what Hardison had said back in Seattle about the whole Head/Heart/Gut dynamic, when it came to doing his job, Eliot didn't have the luxury of going through every option and evaluating all possible outcomes. That was the mastermind's thing.

                The hitter's thing was to act on instinct.

                Eyes still closed, he threw his weight forward, breaking into a sprint. By this point, the layout of the garage and the vehicles in it were perfectly mapped out in his mind, and his outstretched hand met the warm metal of the SUV's hood at the precise moment that he'd expected. One step later, when he knew he was past the headlights, he opened his eyes.

                The SUV's passenger-side door was wide open in front of him - clearly the men had been firing from behind it, using it like a shield - but he darted around it. As he did, he spotted two men: one with a handgun and one with an automatic rifle. Both blinked rapidly at him, but, still obviously blinded by the brights of Lucille's French Cousin streaming from behind Eliot's approaching form, neither reacted quickly enough to avoid a blow to the face.

                Eliot, who had no such vision problem after his closed-eye crossing between the vehicles, managed to deal them both an additional knockout hit before two other guys - shooting in Nate's direction from behind the driver's side door - noticed him. One called out to the other in French, and they both swiveled to point the barrels of their weapons through the SUV's interior. Before they could fire, though, Eliot slammed shut the door on his side, and, as he had hoped, the shots meant for him broke harmlessly on bulletproof glass.

                Good thing he'd been right.

                _Hardison's the gut, my ass._

                He stepped toward the front of the SUV, put a boot on its bumper, used it to step up onto the hood, and before the men could react and adjust to the new target - they were clearly struggling with the same vision-adjustment problems as their compatriots – he had launched himself from the perch, tackling one of the men to the ground. Eliot used the other's hesitation at firing toward his partner to wrestle the guy he'd clotheslined into a choke hold.

                "Put it down!" he barked to the man he hadn't tackled. "Put your weapon down!"

                The other man, a silhouette against the headlights of the van, hesitated.

                "You shoot me, you hit him, guaranteed," said Eliot, tightening his hold. The man in his grip gurgled. "Put the gun down, or I snap his neck." That wasn’t true, of course, but his adversary didn’t know that.

                He heard Parker suck in a quiet breath. "No, Eliot - "

                "It's okay," said Sophie. "He's just saying that to bluff the man with the gun." She paused before adding, "Right, Eliot?"

                Shock hit Eliot like a blow to the gut, and he almost lost his grip on his hostage.

                What?

Was - was that what they really thought? Did they honestly believe… after all this time - nearly six years… How could they think he would be willing to so casually kill a man?

                _"Well,"_ said a voice in his head. _"You have been pretty damned scary lately. Beating up innocent pickpockets… intimidating members of the CIA…"_

                Eliot swallowed the pooling saliva in his mouth that heralded a wave of nausea. There it was, the actual, most urgent reason that he had to leave the team: he didn't know if he could even keep them safe from himself. And, apparently, neither did they.

 _Shut up,_ he told the voice.

                But the words burned. And, even though he shook his head to dispel them - to focus on the task at hand, protecting the team - they left their mark.

                He said nothing for a moment, just choked up on his choke hold. He didn't take his suddenly moist eyes off of the silhouetted man. But he did grunt once, to dispel a growing lump in his throat. And hopefully the team would understand it as an affirmative response to Sophie's question, a signal that he, as had been the case since the day he'd become one of them, would do everything in his power to avoid the loss of life.

                Slowly, the silhouette extended its arm and dropped its gun. Then it surprised Eliot by speaking: "Eliot Spencer?"

                The voice was familiar, but it wasn't until Eliot adjusted his position so that he wasn't looking into any headlights that he recognized its owner.

                It was, of all people, the _Milieu_ boss from the _banlieue_ , the one who Sophie had been forced to convince to let Eliot and Hardison go. The guy who had very nearly nipped their trip to Paris in the bud. Standing five feet away, putting up his hands, and yet… smiling.

                "You," said Eliot.

                The man raised his eyebrows. "So I am. Myself, I mean."

                Eliot scowled, his eyes narrowing. "You know, you're a damn good liar. I believed you when you said you knew nothing about all this."

                "This?"

                "Eliot?" asked Sophie. "Is that… oh, what was his name… that fellow who almost murdered you?"

                "Ebrahim," said Nate, emerging from behind McMaster's car and dusting himself off.

                "Nate," Eliot warned. "Stay over there."

                "Oh yes… Ebrahim," Sophie said. "Nathan Ford, how did you remember that?"

                "Wait," said Hardison. "That guy had a _name?_ "

                "Nate's mind is like a Diebold bank vault with dual combination dials," said Parker in that cheerful tone that she had been using to deliver her Leverage Fun Facts to Morgan Gray, though no response came from the CIA officer.

                Ebrahim turned his smile on Nate. "Do you and I know each other?"

                Nate smiled back. "Not officially, no. But I'm an associate of Ms. Delacourt's. And I believe the two of you are acquainted."

                Earbuds in the van picked up shuffling, and Sophie said, "I'll take that as my cue."

                "No," growled Eliot. "Nobody move."

                "Eliot - "

                Ebrahim looked back at him with confusion. "Easy, _monsieur_. I am not going anywhere."

                "I said, nobody move!" Eliot's sudden yell echoed through the nearly-empty garage, leaving silence in its wake. "Nobody's going anywhere," he added more quietly. "Not until Ebrahim tells us about the attack. I want time, location, brand of explosive… everything. Now start talking."

                But Ebrahim didn't say anything. It was Nate who spoke. "He doesn't know anything," said the mastermind. "He's not working with McMaster."

                "Not working with him?" snapped Eliot. "Nate, I saw this exact same SUV outside McMaster's apartment the other day. These guys have been following us."

                "Following us?" asked Nate and looked at Ebrahim with infuriating calm. "Or following him?"

                "Nate, what the hell are you - "

                "The call didn't go through."

                Eliot blinked as the words sunk in. "What?"

                "The call." Nate pulled McMaster's phone out of a pants pocket, giving it a little jiggle. "McMaster dialed out, but the call never connected. They're not with him."

                Ebrahim spat on the ground. "With Carson McMaster? Never. You are the ones working with that bastard."

                "No, actually," said Nate, and he really did look perfectly at ease at this point. "We're just trying to con him."

                "So, let me get this straight," said Hardison. Eliot could almost picture him rubbing his eyes in confusion. "These guys don't like McMaster, either?"

                While Eliot could hardly blame anyone for finding McMaster to be the scum of the earth, things still weren't adding up. "Nate, he basically admitted to us that McMaster had been visiting the refugee camp."

                "Yes," said Ebrahim. "He had. And after your… visit… we began watching him a bit more closely." He looked back at Nate. "We have been shadowing him ever since. We know all about what he is planning."

                Finally. Finally they were getting to it. "The attack?"

                Ebrahim frowned. "Attack? Mr. Spencer, as I told you three days ago, we know nothing about any attack."

                "Then what do you mean?" asked Nate. "What's he planning?"

                "To infringe upon our territory," said the _Milieu_ boss, warily glancing between Nate and Eliot. "He is trying to establishing a black market network with the Libyan refugees. Were he to succeed - "

                "You'd lose a huge chunk of your business," Nate finished. "Because refugee extortion is an awfully profitable enterprise for you."

                "Mr… Nate, was it?" said Ebrahim. The pleasant smile was back. "We provide the Libyans with protection. The international community does not care about them. The French government actively resents them. Without my _enterprise_ , as you call it, those people would not be able to eat."

                "Unless Carson McMaster swoops in to underbid you."

                "Carson McMaster is an American looking to make - how would you say - a quick buck."

                "So… what? You came here to…?"

                Ebrahim shrugged. "To kill him."

                "Ah." Nate's gaze flickered to Eliot. "Eliot… can I have a word?"

                "Just one?" said Hardison. "I'm thinking this is going to take at least a couple paragraphs - "

                "Hardison," growled Eliot. "Shut up." He pushed away the man he'd been borderline choking, letting him stumble a few feet toward Ebrahim before saying, "Sign of good faith."

                Nate raised McMaster's empty Browning handgun and kept it trained on Ebrahim and his recovering colleague. "Just a moment," he said before lowering his voice as he came and stood next to the Eliot. "All right, guys. What do we think?"

                "I think I'm pretty damn confused," said Hardison.

                "Me, too," said Sophie. "What on earth is going on here?"

                "Do you believe him, Nate?" asked Parker. "About following McMaster around but not knowing about the attack?"

                Nate rubbed his chin. "Either Ebrahim is a very good liar, or we're missing something."

                "He has to be lying," murmured Morgan Gray. It was the first time she'd spoken since her boss had recognized Eliot and Nate. "Gérard Nejem tailed McMaster for weeks. That's how he found out about the attack in the first place. McMaster's been going to the Libyan refugee camp, all right, and Nejem had evidence that it was to coordinate with extremists."

                "Nejem?" said a groggy voice. McMaster had woken up. "That… bastard…"

                Faint scuffling came over the comm channel, and then Sophie cried, "Morgan! Morgan, stop!"

                "You killed him, you son of a bitch!" Gray's tone was dark, touched with hysteria. "He was onto you! When is the attack?" Another sound: a muffled thump like she'd landed a blow. "Tell me when it is! Hey! Dammit, get your hands off me!"

                "Hell no, woman!" said Hardison, who must have reached to restrain her. "Calm the hell down!"

                "Morgan, stop!" exclaimed Parker, but Eliot was only half-listening at this point.

                _"You killed him, you son of a bitch!"_ Gray's words rattled around in his mind. Why? Why did that sound… wrong?

                Because McMaster was like Moreau, too aloof and careful to do his own dirty work. If he'd been behind Nejem's death, he would have -

                Then the answer hit him, and Eliot suddenly felt like he'd been doused in cold water.

                "McMaster didn't take out Nejem," he said. Even though he hadn't raised his voice, the altercation in the van seemed to freeze with his words.

                "What? What are you talking about?" said Gray. "Of course he did."

                "No." _Goddamn it. I'm such an idiot._ "He was going to, but he didn't. We heard him, remember? In his apartment. He was on the phone."

                Now it was McMaster's words that echoed in Eliot's mind: " _No, I won't be requiring your services any longer. … The target is already dead."_

                "The target is already dead," Eliot repeated softly. "McMaster set up a hit… but it never happened. He didn't kill Gérard Nejem. Someone else did."

                Stunned silence swallowed the comm channel.

                "But… but, what does that mean?" said Sophie finally.

                Nate cleared his throat and looked at the ground, breathing out through pursed lips. "In light of what our new friend Ebrahim just told us…" he said, "I think it means we've got the wrong guy."


	22. Chapter 22

                Parker liked Lucille's French Cousin. She was a very nice van. But with seven people packed inside, one of whom was tied up and thrashing on the floor, things were beginning to get a little crowded.

                It wasn't just the number of passengers that made the vehicle feel so claustrophobic, though; Parker was no stranger to small spaces. No, the discomfort that desperately made her want to roll down a window had far less to do with being sandwiched between Hardison and a pile of gear bags than it did with the tension that radiated off of each person in the van, filling the interior like security smoke inside a glass case.

                "That was… nice of Ebrahim to let us keep McMaster," she ventured after they'd gone ten blocks without a word. (McMaster gurgling around his gag in protest didn't count.)

                "Nice?" said Hardison with a sideways look. "Nate and Eliot basically threatened to sell him out to the police if he didn't."

                Parker shrugged. "But at least he was polite about it."

                Hardison sighed, reaching for her hand and squeezing it.

                Even though Parker appreciated the gesture, the warmth and security of Hardison's fingers curled around hers, she knew him well enough to understand that he was doing it just as much to avoid saying anything else as to reassure her or himself. Something was wrong in the van, and he didn't want to acknowledge it.

                Parker was the opposite. When something was wrong, she didn't want to think about it; she needed to _do_ something about it.

                "We have to go back to the refugee camp," she said. "If Gérard Nejem thought McMaster was part of the attack plot, maybe it's because the people who were helping McMaster to set up the black market are actually the ones planning it. They're the only common link here."

                "You're thinking too myopically, Parker," said Nate from the front seat. "The question you need to ask yourself is:  was there ever an attack to begin with?"

                Everyone shifted to look at him.

                "What?" said Morgan, her voice raspy and low. She was sitting across from Parker, inched as far away from Eliot on the bench seat they shared as was probably humanly possible. She hadn't been her usual, snarky self since Eliot had blown her cover with McMaster. "How can you even suggest that?"

                Nate turned in his seat to fix Morgan with one of his  not-scary-but-scary looks, where he basically just stared at someone with a blank face until they squirmed. "Parker can explain. She'll get it in just a second."

                Parker frowned. Get what? Why would Nate think that there wasn't actually an imminent terrorist attack? They had files full of surveillance and notes that Gérard Nejem had -

                Oh.

                "Our only tie to the idea of an attack was Nejem," she said slowly. "He's the real common link."

                "Bingo," said Nate. "No one else - not the CIA, not the _Milieu_ \- has caught wind of anything to do with upcoming terrorism in Paris. Our number-one suspect, the man we were essentially guaranteed would be the key to stopping things, has literally no connections to anything Nejem accused him of. It's almost like Gérard Nejem made everything up."

                Morgan twitched, and for a second Parker was afraid that the woman might launch herself at Nate the way she had at McMaster only minutes before. Eliot must have thought the same thing, because he tensed like he was ready to intercept any move the CIA officer made.

                But Morgan stayed seated, clenching her fists. "You really are an ass, Ford. Gérard Nejem was a good man, a public servant who died in the line of - "

                "Spare me," said Nate over her. His expression was neutral, but his voice rose in volume. "Gérard Nejem was a thirty-four year old intelligence lackey, chasing pipe dream leads in search of a promotion he should have gotten eighteen months ago. How do I know? Because before he began chasing Carson McMaster, Nejem hadn't landed his agency a win bigger than immigration fraud. Or, didn't you look into him before you so blindly took him at his word?"

                "Blindly? You son of a - "

                "Getting angry at me doesn't change the reality, Ms. Gray. You were conned. Or maybe Nejem was just so desperate that he was delusional. But there is no attack. Line up the evidence, and it's clear as day. Hope you haven't already cleared shelf space for a medal of merit."

                "Nate," said Sophie sharply. She took her eyes off of the road just long enough to fix him with a piercing look. "Enough."

                Relief spread through Parker's body at Sophie's interference, and muscles relaxed that she hadn't even realized were tense. Nate's tirade was unfairly personal and awful, and yet only now did it occur to Parker that she might have been able to say something to stop it. Because Nate had that kind of paralyzing effect, even on those he wasn't tearing apart. Of course the person he went after couldn't look away, like he was a spider and they were caught in his web, but sometimes Parker thought that, even if she wasn't the spider's meal, she was still somehow stuck in the web's sticky strands, forced to watch the feast happen.

                Thanks goodness for Sophie, the lady spider.

                Now Parker could find her voice. "Morgan was just trying to do her job, Nate." She glanced across the van, but Morgan was still having a staring contest with Nate, looking like she might throw up.

                "Don't make excuses for her, Parker," growled Eliot. He, like Parker, looked at Morgan, but his gaze was full of loathing. "She risked our lives for nothing. Even if she'd had all her facts straight, McMaster recognized us. The con ended in that parking garage, one way or another. And she knew it was coming."

                "But - "

                "Is that true?" asked Hardison quietly. All eyes were on Morgan now, except for Sophie's. "Did you know he would recognize us?"

                Parker could remember with perfect clarity the moment in the embassy lobby when Morgan had morphed out of her Charlotte Dahl alias, the way she had transformed from an uncertain, awkward client into a self-assured, prickly clandestine operative/government grifter as if she was taking off a bodysuit made of someone else's skin. Those seconds had felt like an eternity to Parker, and they'd spooked her into nearly getting arrested. But then Morgan had become her only ally in Paris, twice kept her from getting nabbed, and made her laugh far more often than that. In fact, Parker had actually come to like Morgan Gray more than she'd pitied or wanted to help Charlotte Dahl. Morgan was a friend now.

                So it twisted Parker's stomach to watch Morgan - her friend- close her eyes and crumple at Hardison's question, her shoulders caving inward and her head drooping like someone had reached in and removed not only her snark, but her spine.

                "No," Morgan barely whispered. "I didn't know. But I should have."

                Parker swallowed, torn between the impulse to give Morgan a hug and the horrible notion that her new friend hadn't been a good one, after all. No one else in the van even seemed to be breathing. Nate and Eliot both wore expressions that might have been disgust, or triumph, or both.

                "Why?" said Hardison.

                Morgan leaned forward, burying a hand in the long hair that fell like a wall around her face. "The CIA has files on all of you. When San Lorenzo elected Michael Vittori instead of Edwin Ribera… we knew that was you. I mean, I knew who you were, even before I got that piece of paper with your email. I should have assumed that McMaster would have seen those files, too."

                "Wait, what?" said Parker before Morgan could continue. "You're upset because the CIA has _files on us?_ "

                "I should have warned you - "

                "Warned us about _what?_ Everyone has files on us! The FBI has files on us, but there are still actual agents who think Hardison and I work for them!"

                Eliot's eyes snapped to meet hers. "That's different, Parker - "

                "How? How is that different?" She looked back at Morgan. "The embassy has facial recognition software, remember? _Duh_ the CIA knows who we are! But it's our job to make people forget what they know. We convince them that they know something else. You heard Sophie do it. McMaster spent a whole evening with her, and he wasn't ever like, 'Oh, hey, you look like Sophie Devereaux.' He didn't even suspect Nate and Eliot until something tipped him off. Eliot's accent must have jogged his memory. Well, what were the chances of that? Like eleventy-billion to one!"

                "Oh, so it's my fault?" snapped Eliot.

                "It's nobody's fault! But if it was someone's, it would be mine, because I should have told you that I had a backup plan in case we were made. I know I need to be better about communicating what I'm thinking…"

                "God," moaned Morgan through her hands. "This van is like one big guilt complex on wheels."

                Sophie gave a frustrated sigh. "It's always been that way."

                 "Fine, it's not Gray's fault we were recognized, whatever," said Eliot. "But she doesn't just get a free pass, Parker. She put this team in danger the moment she walked into the brew pub, and Nate's right - if she'd done her damn homework, we wouldn't even be here right now!"

                "Yeah, and McMaster would still be out there! He _is_ a bad guy, you know. Maybe he isn't quite as bad as we thought, but if we give all the evidence that Hardison found to the CIA, they'll have to do something about it. This is still a win!"

                "A win? You all could have died back there."

                "But we didn't, because we have you!"

                "My job is to keep you safe in the first place, Parker, not let you walk into a kill box and hope that I can get you out! But, no, you're so goddamn cavalier with your own life, and you drag everyone else behind you - "

                "Hey," interrupted Hardison. "Chill out, man. Don't put this on her."

                "I'm not putting it _on_ anybody, Hardison. But she has to accept that her actions have consequences!"

                "So does inaction," muttered Nate, turning back around in his seat.

                Eliot's eyes followed Nate's movement. "Excuse me?" he said. "What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

                Nate kept facing forward, so Eliot's eyes seemed to almost bore holes in the back of his head. "Some of us have failed to act, Eliot. I told you to call, for example. I told you to call if you needed anything."

                The tendons in Eliot's neck stood out against his skin. "I also recall you saying that I never did, you know, need anything."

                Out of the corner of her eye, Parker saw one of Morgan's hands shift away from her face, and the eye that it uncovered darted sideways to watch Eliot.

                Hardison was watching, too. They were all watching Eliot, except for Sophie, who was watching the road, and except for Nate… who was doing it on purpose. People didn't start conversations with other people and not look at them.

                The painful, twisty feeling in Parker's stomach from watching Morgan disintegrate came back. But it wasn't about Morgan this time… Eliot's attention had fully shifted away from her, and so had Nate's. No one was thinking about whether things were Morgan's fault or not anymore.

                Because something much more important and scary was happening than new friends being accused by old ones: old ones turning on old ones.

                While she was by no means on Nate's level when it came to powers of observation, Parker did pride herself on her ability to notice small details and put together a big picture; it was a skill she had cultivated over years of casing robbery targets. And so, even though she'd been a little preoccupied with helping Morgan and keeping the team together and trying to figure out which French orange soda tasted most like Orange Squeeze, she'd definitely noticed that something had been simmering between Eliot and Nate since Friday.

                Now it was starting to boil over.

                "Ah. Yes," said Nate. "I should have known."

                Eliot's lip began to slowly curl into a snarl. "Listen, if you've got somethin' to say - "

                "I should have known you'd be too proud, Eliot. But I guess I assumed that you would do whatever it took to protect them ''til your dying day.' Instead… well, here we are. You blame Ms. Gray - and of course she has plenty of fault of her own to shoulder - but who allowed things to get this far? Don't blame Parker for doing what she had to in order to keep the team together. She shouldn't have had to. That was _your_ job."

                Parker had thought Eliot was mad at her. But that had been before she watched Nate's words contort the hitter's face into a mask of pure rage. His voice when he spoke, though, was dark and cold - his scariest, angriest voice. "You bastard. You dropped all of this in our laps without warning. _You_ lied to us from the moment we moved to Portland so that you could wash your hands and get out, get back to your moral high ground as an honest man. We weren't ever anything but thieves to you, were we? You never stopped thinking you were better than us, not even at the end. No, perennial good guy Nate Ford gets to walk away and have his fairytale, white knight ending, while we keep cleaning up the world's shit."

                The van no longer felt like it was full of dense smoke; it felt like an airless vacuum. Parker couldn't breathe.

                "You know, Eliot, you're right," said Nate. He finally turned back around and fixed the hitter with his own, chillingly dark look - the look of the spider before it sank its fangs into its victim. "Ultimately, it is my fault. It was a mistake to get out when I did." He paused. "I should have known better than to leave the team in the hands of a violent psychopath whose complete lack of self-control threatens everyone around him."

                The van swerved violently before coming to a screeching halt in the middle of the street. If the roads hadn't been empty because it was the middle of the night, there would have almost certainly been a collision. As it was, McMaster's restrained, gurgling form was sent careening into the wall, and the pile of gear bags toppled onto him. Everyone else was nearly strangled by their seatbelts, though Hardison threw a protective arm out in front of Parker. Morgan breathed out what sounded like curse words in a few different languages.

                "Enough!" shouted Sophie. She yanked up on the parking brake before whirling on Nate and Eliot. "Both of you! How dare you say such awful things to each other? You're bloody family, for God's sake!"

                Parker coughed and rubbed the place where her seatbelt had dug into her neck, looking up from McMaster buried under the avalanche of bags to see Sophie's desperate, fearful, _outraged_ face. Then her gaze traveled to Nate, who had been snapped around by his inertia against that of the braking van and was hunched over in his seat, holding his neck; he'd probably have at least mild whiplash.

                Finally, she looked at Eliot.

                Whatever she had been expecting to see, though - the hitter wincing at some discomfort of his own, or a look of shame at Sophie's rebuke - it in no way prepared her for what she actually witnessed.

                Eliot was gripping the edge of his seat so hard that his fists trembled and the vinyl upholstery creaked, his face void of any indication that he even acknowledged the van's sudden stop. Instead, his expression was loaded with something else, something that made his widened eyes seem as if they were looking right through the floor.

                He swallowed, his Adam's apple slowly rising and falling, before blowing out a single, shaky breath. The widened eyes filled with something else - something uncertain and vulnerable - and Eliot raised them, looking in brief turns at Sophie, Nate, Hardison, even Morgan… before settling on Parker.

                Eliot had become as close to Parker as a brother over the five and a half years they'd known each other. No matter the strain of the past few months, he was still her confidante - the one person she knew who could understand what it meant to do the things no one else could do. But something had changed on their last day in Portland, the day Morgan had come to them and Eliot had insisted that they split.

                _"Parker, grow up!"_

                Even though Eliot had made pancakes last night and everyone had laughed and they'd made jokes about his dating habits and Sophie starting toaster fires…

                Something was broken.

                And yet, Parker still knew how to read Eliot's face, one of the only faces in the world that she had completely memorized and understood. She'd never be able to read people like Sophie, but she could understand her team - she could understand her _family_ \- without them having to say a word.

                Right now, across the van, he was asking her a question. Only her.

                _"Is that what you think, too?"_

Was that what she thought? Did she agree that Eliot was a violent psychopath? How could she? How could he think that she did?

                And yet… hadn't she told Hardison in Seattle that she was afraid that Eliot would go back to who he'd been before the team? Had that just come out of nowhere, or were there kernels of truth in it? Had there been flashes of that man on Friday, when he'd annihilated that pickpocket - or just twenty minutes ago when he'd so casually threatened to snap the neck of his hostage?

                She felt her lips part. _No!_ she tried to force out. _Never. Never. Never. I know you. I know that you would never hurt us. You protect us. You love us. I_ know _you._

                But the words wouldn't come. Because there was a part of Parker - a part she hated and she didn't want but she couldn't shut up - that was afraid that the Eliot in front of her wasn't the one she knew. Afraid that her Eliot was gone.

                So she could only mutely watch as Eliot's mouth formed a thin, grim line. And when he tore his gaze away from hers, she felt as if someone had slipped a knife between her ribs.

                He went back to staring at the floor for what seemed like eternity, as if the whole van was suspended in time while it waited for him. He sucked shallow breaths in and out through his nose, and his body jerked a couple of times like he was trying to suppress dry heaves. Finally, he released the death grip of one of his hands, bringing it up as a trembling fist that he pressed against his mouth.

                "No," he rasped, briefly looking at Sophie. His eyes glistened with the reflections of streetlamps outside. "I'm not anyone's family."

                He ran a hand through his hair. Then he unbuckled his seatbelt and stood. Before Parker could unglue her mouth to form a protest to stop him, before anyone could do anything, he’d opened the side door and jumped out. His boots hit the pavement, and the door slammed closed once more.

                His footsteps took off - quick like a sprint but heavy because they were Eliot's and he ran like a freight train. And it was then, and only then, that the van - full of stupefied looks and the noxious weight of lingering anger and hurt - finally came to life. Morgan's jaw dropped open. Hardison leapt from his seat. Sophie threw open the driver's side door, and Nate buried his face in a hand.

                But all Parker could see was the complete betrayal and utter despair that she'd glimpsed on Eliot Spencer's face right before he'd closed the door and run. Before he'd run away - from them _._

                And all she could feel was a terrifying certainty that he wasn't ever coming back.

 


	23. Chapter 23

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know... it's a day later than I promised. But the hiatus extended itself a bit--mind of its own. Hope this makes up for it!

                When Morgan buzzed in at the garage-level entrance to the American embassy, it took a minute for a bemused security guard to come to the door. Then he got a good look at the personnel badge she was flashing and any trace of confusion he might have been feeling at someone trying to get into the building at one o' clock in the morning disappeared from his face. He just raised his eyebrows in expectation.

                "Hey there," she said and squinted at his badge. "Michael. Can I call you Mike?"

                He blinked.

                She smiled in response, thumbing over her shoulder. "So listen, Mike, I've got an uncle of mine waiting in the car, and I need to escort him in. Mind cutting the cameras for a sec?"

                He cleared his throat. "I'll need Level Five authorization for that, ma'am."

                "Mike. Come on. It's late. I don't want to wake anybody."

                "I'm sorry, ma'am, but any unusual camera activity requires at least the authorization of your department head."

                Morgan sighed but smiled again. "Yeah. All right. I'll get him for you. Just give me a minute." Holding up a finger, she turned around and headed back to the sidewalk. Then, as soon as she knew she was out of Mike's sightline, she jogged across the street and down an alley to where the red van that Alec Hardison was calling "Lucille's French Cousin" - whatever that meant – was parked.

                She rapped on the back door. Hardison opened it.

                For a couple of minutes, as she'd been back around the building she knew best in all of Paris  and had to turn on her ability to cajole and persuade, it had been possible to forget everything that had happened in the past half an hour. In fact, losing herself in an op was what she did best. But as her eyes fell on Hardison's crestfallen face and took in the rest of the stonily silent interior of the van – Parker curled up on her seat, knees to her chest; Devereaux staring out the driver's side window, not looking at Ford; Ford with his palms together, index fingers pressed against his lips; McMaster wrapped up in some harness apparatus like a fish in a newspaper – Eliot Spencer's absence was conspicuous and unsettling... more unsettling, maybe, than his presence had been.

                It had only been last night – over the most heavenly pancakes she'd ever put in her mouth, though she'd have sooner died than complimented the same chef who had murdered her a dozen different ways in her dreams – that Morgan was finally able to grasp the entire picture of why the Leverage team she'd met in Portland had been three instead of five. The joking and storytelling had filled in the exposition gaps of why such tension existed between not only Parker, Hardison, and Spencer, but between that trio and Ford and Devereaux as well: Ford and Devereaux had retired three months ago, and the two groups hadn't talked since. _That_ was something Agency intelligence hadn't quite yet caught up with.

                Even armed with this new information, however, Morgan was almost blindsided by the vitriol that Ford and Spencer had exchanged after Parker's attempt to absolve her of blame for Carson McMaster's recognition of the crew. Clearly the "breakfast for dinner" ceasefire couldn't have lasted forever, but it had certainly ended much more quickly than Morgan had expected. The resentment that Ford and Spencer, in particular, had been carrying around had obviously been closer to boiling over than she'd realized. And yet, that surprise was nothing compared to that of watching Eliot Spencer... break.

                Honestly, there wasn't another way to describe what had happened, and it had been both fascinating and awful to watch. Fascinating in that Morgan hadn't expected Spencer to be capable of the depth of feeling required to be cut so fatally by Ford's words. Awful in that he clearly had been, and when no one had stepped in – not even Devereaux, the peacemaker – to undercut what Ford had said, the hitter had come apart. Somehow, maybe because it was the last thing she'd ever expected to see, watching Eliot Spencer's face as his heart broke had nearly broken Morgan's, too.

                But empathy was a dangerous business, particularly when the essence of your profession was the deception of others. Because on the one hand, it was necessary to understand what made others tick – what they could be offered or told to pick the locks securing what you wanted – while on the other, too much of it and you risked compromising your ability to see a target as a target. Too much empathy, and you could lose your objectivity.

                So the moment Morgan felt her heart crack just a little bit, she had the super glue ready: mental images of the horrors listed in Spencer's file, the not-so-veiled threats he'd leveled against her, the fact that he seemed determined to blame poor Parker for everything that had happened.

                No one on the Leverage team appeared to have any super glue of their own, though. The melancholy in "Lucille's French Cousin" was almost suffocating. Eliot Spencer had meant something to these people, and they'd allowed him to leave.

                 By the time they'd come to their senses, it had been too late. Hardison and Parker canvassed the area while Devereaux drove the block what felt like a hundred times. They seemed to think that if they could just find Spencer, things could be fixed. Their family could be saved. The empathy had tugged at Morgan again then, for Spencer's team, because she'd known they'd never find him; just like the rest of them, Eliot Spencer was clearly a professional at avoiding detection when he wanted to. And even if they did manage to locate him, could they really expect someone - especially Spencer - to simply accept an apology and move on after an altercation like that?

                Morgan blinked and shook her head a bit as she stepped up into the van. Thoughts like that got a little too close to un-sticking the super glue.

                "All right, small hiccup," she said, pulling the door closed behind her. "They're not going to kill the cameras unless I have Level Five permission... which I'll need, ironically, from our good friend here." She pointed at McMaster, who was glaring at her over his gag.

                Parker lifted her head from her knees. "We can't risk putting him on the phone," she said tiredly, her heart obviously far away from the task at hand. "He'll just send a distress signal."

                Morgan shrugged. "This security guy couldn't pick Carson McMaster out of a lineup. Ford or Hardison can make the call. We just need the authorization code."

                "You think he's just going to give it to us?" said Hardison in that same exhausted, defeated tone as Parker.

                "Of course not. But I've got a couple of ideas."

                "Like what?" Hardison murmured. "We can't con him. He's lying there listening to us."

                "I'm not talking about conning him."

                "What, then?"

                Morgan reached for one of the gear bags that Parker had brought along for the evening. They had been haphazardly re-stacked after toppling onto McMaster when Devereaux had done her dramatic Fast and Furious braking stunt. "Parker, you've got some weird stuff in here, right?"

                Parker shrugged. "Things. Things we might need."

                Hopefully one of those things would work with Morgan's idea.

                The first two bags were a wash, filled mostly with clothing that Morgan had no recollection of Parker ever buying. The third bag was more interesting, though, stuffed with an assortment of what looked like junk, some of which seemed to have no practical use to a con. But no sooner had the thought crossed her mind than she laid eyes on the perfect item, and any assumption she'd made about practicality quickly evaporated. "Wow. You really do come prepared," she said and pulled out the blowtorch she'd found. "What was this for?"

                Parker just shrugged again. "Locked things."

                Thank goodness for that kind of reasoning.

                Hardison, however, looked a little less comatose all of the sudden. "Um, what are you going to do with that?"

                Firing up the blowtorch experimentally, Morgan pointed at McMaster with her free hand. "You can take his gag off."

                "What the – you're joking, right?"

                Devereaux's attention turned from the window to what was happening behind her. "What's going on back – " She blinked and gasped. "Morgan! Put that down, please. This is not how we do things."

                Morgan raised an eyebrow, crouching down beside McMaster, whose eyes were suddenly as big as dinner plates and was unsuccessfully trying to wriggle away from her.  "No offense," she said. "But I'm not one of you."

                "Woman!" exclaimed Hardison. He made a move like he might try and restrain her the way he had earlier, when she'd slugged McMaster over Gérard Nejem – before the revelation that McMaster hadn't been responsible for Nejem's death after all.

                That was one of many puzzles to which Morgan wanted answers, but it would have to wait until she had McMaster in secure holding. And this was the way to get that ball rolling.

                She twisted toward the hacker, lighting the blowtorch again and brandishing it. "Nope. You just chill right over there. This'll only take a second."

                "Morgan!" Devereaux tried again. "Please. We're not savages – "

                "Oh, let her," muttered Ford.

                "Stop it!" Devereaux hissed at him. "Haven't you done enough?"

                Ford glanced at her, his face unreadable, but then turned away. He said nothing else.

                That left just Parker's unspoken opinion, but when Morgan made eye contact with her, the thief just stared back. No protest, no support. Acquiescence.

                Trying not to think about the haunted look in Parker's eyes and focus instead on the tacit approval, Morgan reached for McMaster's gag and tugged it down around his neck.

                As soon as the cloth was clear of his mouth, he shouted, "No! Wait! Please!"

                _Bingo._

                Morgan raised her eyebrows. "Hey there, Carson. Got something you want to tell me?"

                McMaster's gaze flitted back and forth between her face and the blowtorch. He swallowed. "It's tango-alpha-charlie-four-three. My authorization code. Please. Please don't."

                "If you're lying..."

                "I'm not lying, you crazy bitch!"

                She smirked and replaced his gag. "Ouch. That one hit me really hard in the self-esteem."

                Good. That had been straightforward enough. There were times when she loved predictable, cowardly people. Tossing the blowtorch to Hardison, she stood up. "And you said we couldn't con him."

                The hacker just stared at her, almost fumbling the aluminum canister. "Con him? What the hell are you talking about?"

                "Come on, Hardison," she said. "Don't tell me you fell for that, too." She winked, though the ordinary satisfaction she would have felt at pulling off a bit was overshadowed by an uncomfortable twinge as it sank in that everyone in the van, not just Hardison, had been expecting her to really burn off one of McMaster's ears or something. Maybe they were all just a little off their game… or maybe they really just didn't trust her. Of course, their reactions had been essential to selling the credibility of the bluff, but it still stung for some reason.

                She shook her head to try and dispel the feeling. But it lurked there in the back of her mind. "Ford. You still have McMaster's phone?"

                "Yes," came the subdued response.

                "I'll give you the number for embassy dispatch. Ask to be put through to the garage, and give the guy McMaster's code. Oh, and my employee ID sequence, since I'm the one who's technically making the request. Here." She grabbed a grease pencil out of the random junk bag and jotted down the dispatch number on the laminated surface of her personnel badge, passing it up to Ford. "As soon as we've got clearance, we'll be able to drive right in, no cameras."

The end was so close she could nearly taste it. Soon this whole not-a-terror-plot-but-McMaster's-still-a-scumbag thing would be over, and she would have answers about how it had started in the first place.

                _And then we'll all go our separate ways,_ she thought. _No more empathy or consorting with criminals. Back to Uzbekistan or Tunisia or wherever._

Back to normal.

                Why didn't that feel like more of a relief?

* * *

 

                Getting McMaster into the embassy building was much simpler than it had been getting Lucille's French Cousin into the garage. Morgan just untied the station chief's lower body so that he could walk, and she and Parker marched him over to the elevator that would take them straight up into the office wing. Though he flashed them both any number of dark looks, he didn't put up much of a fight.

                Hardison and Devereaux followed, each holding out a hand and murmuring a quick thanks and goodbye before returning to the van. Frankly, it was more warmth than Morgan had expected, particularly in the midst of their grief and guilt. Ford, though, never left the passenger's seat, and he said nothing when Parker and Morgan got out of car. That was just as well. Morgan wasn't going to lose any sleep over never seeing Nathan Ford again.

                Parker insisted upon helping wrangle McMaster all the way upstairs, even though Morgan probably could have managed alone. But Morgan did appreciate the assistance, because, unlike Ford and Spencer or even Hardison and Devereaux, she was actually going to miss Parker. And every false-alarm goodbye they'd had so far had only served to underscore that fact.

                Stepping out of the elevator, they were met with a wall of darkness; even the most dedicated embassy and Agency personnel had gone home hours ago. Morgan pushed McMaster in the direction of Dave's office, Parker following closely behind.

                "Got some lock picks on you?" Morgan asked.

                "Does the Louvre have at least eleven forgeries on display?" Parker reached into her pocket, then paused, hand frozen inside. She blinked. "Wait. That was a serious question, right? Because I'm working on my sarcasm."

                Morgan couldn't help a grin, both at the question and Parker's little quip. "Yeah, it was serious," she said. "And I think you actually might be better at the sarcasm thing than you give yourself credit for."

                Parker smiled back, though her usual energy and cheer still seemed to be lacking. She pulled her instruments from the pocket and made quick work of Dave's door.

                As they pushed McMaster inside and forced him to sit in one of the folding chairs in the corner of the office, Parker asked, "So why don't you have an office? You work here, too."

                "I'm not a permanent employee," Morgan explained, re-tying McMaster's legs. "I've only been here for a few weeks. Dave has been my handler in France - we actually knew each other from a stint in DC way back when, and he requested me for the Libyan task force thing - but he's actually stationed here. I'm just passing through. Clandestine officers like me spend most of our time out of the office, cultivating assets, relieving people of intelligence, that kind of thing... not much of a need for a cubicle. But, hey, maybe someday they'll give me a cushy desk job at Langley."

                Parker's nose wrinkled. "Ew."

                Honestly, Morgan completely agreed. But it occurred to her then that she should probably stop speaking so freely about the Agency to a wanted criminal, even if she was the most adorable and hilarious human being on the planet.

                _I clearly need more friends._

                "Well," she said as she straightened up, trying to school her voice into a businesslike tone to rip off the band-aid. "I guess that's it. I can take it from here. But thanks so much for your help. With everything. Thank you for believing and trusting me. I'm sorry I pulled you into danger for nothing." She held out a hand.

                Parker just looked at it. "Again?"

                "'Again,' what?"

                "You always want to shake my hand."

                Morgan sighed, about to roll her eyes when Parker pulled her into a very quick, very strong hug. But before Morgan quite realized that it was happening, the thief had already released her and was staring at the floor with a hint of pink in her cheeks.

                To her surprise, Morgan felt warmth in her own face, as well. So much for ripping off the band-aid.

                What to say after that? She was just beginning to formulate some kind of coherent response when Parker dug into her pocket again, this time producing what looked like an index card instead of lockpicks.

                "Here," she said, extending the card. Morgan took it. Both sides were covered in strings of small, handwritten numbers. "In case you... maybe need to get in touch."

                "You have a cell phone for every day of the week or something?"

                "Not just mine. Sophie's, Hardison's, Nate's..." Parker trailed off, her eyes abruptly filling with tears that she forcefully swiped at with one hand.

                She didn't have to finish. Morgan knew who else's phone number was on the card.

                It was her turn to do the hugging, now. She gently pulled Parker into her arms for a second, intending to release her soon after, as Parker herself had done, in case the other woman wasn't especially fond of long hugs. But when she loosened her hold, the thief just clung tighter. And began to cry.

                No amount of figurative super glue could have kept Morgan's heart from breaking in that moment. And she suddenly realized two things: first, that she didn't care. If there was anyone to whom Morgan would have freely given her empathy, it was Parker. And second, no matter how ridiculous or unsafe or illogical it was, Parker was, yes, her friend. A friend for life. Somehow. That notecard and this hug sealed it. There would be no ripping off of this particular band-aid. And it was a relief.

                "Hey..." she murmured. "It's okay. You're going to be okay."

                Parker squeezed tightly with her arms. Her voice when she spoke was thick, yet pitifully small. "He's not coming back. I should have stopped him. I should have told him."

                "What should you have told... Eliot?"

                If Parker noticed Morgan's slight strain at the use of Spencer's first name, she didn't show it. "Nate was mad and hurt and wrong," she said. "Eliot loves us. He... he wouldn't hurt us."

                Something was off, though, about Parker's tone. Like she wasn't fully convinced of her own words. Which was odd, considering the strength of this reaction to Spencer's departure.

                "You don't sound... very confident," Morgan ventured.

                In a second, Parker had not only extricated herself from Morgan's hold but was all the way on the other side of the office. Her eyes were wide, stricken - horrified. She opened her mouth a couple of times, but no sound emerged.

                "... Parker?"

                The thief's tears hadn't stopped, but now they were streaming silently down her cheeks, unaccompanied by the sobs. She leaned her back against the wall with a look of despair. Then she slowly slid down it to the floor, her face in her hands.

                Again, Morgan was sure of what Parker was feeling without having to be told, because Parker was not capable of cloaking her emotions - not when she was being herself. Maybe that was one of the things that drew Morgan to her: that she was an open book, incapable of true deception. She was real.

                How many people in the world, much less within the circles of intelligence and espionage, were truly genuine?

                Parker had sounded uncertain because she _was._ She was torn between her love for Eliot Spencer and what must have seemed to her to be insidious doubts - doubts that, frankly, Morgan would have corroborated. Spencer _was_ dangerous. He had a fat CIA file to prove it. Even more, she had personally witnessed him losing control. Maybe he was more capable of feeling than she had given him credit for, but that, perversely, only heightened his threat, because an emotional monster resisted predictability the way a cold professional didn't.

                Any sane person would have doubted that man. Any sane person would have stayed as far away from him as possible.

                But not Parker. Parker was turning on herself for doing it, because, to her, Eliot Spencer was family. How the hell that worked, Morgan had no idea, but only that could explain the undone girl on the floor.

                Morgan suddenly didn't know how to process Parker coming apart at the seams. Half of her was almost paralyzed by Parker's pain, didn't know what to do except listen and provide kind words until the worst of it passed. The other half was fueled by the same awareness and pragmatism that had helped her to keep from following the Leverage team into their misery when Spencer had jumped out of the van; it had generated the super glue then, and it wanted to fix this now... by any means necessary.

                She crossed the office, crouching in front of Parker's huddled form. "Parker. Listen to me." She grabbed the other woman's upper arms and shook them until two teary, brown eyes lifted to meet her own. Morgan nearly lost her nerve then, but she sucked in a breath through her nose and summoned every ounce of her ability to show people what they wanted to see instead of what she was actually thinking. And she pressed on.

                "Let's get one thing straight right now, okay?" she said. She refused to release Parker's gaze. "I want that uncertainty out of your voice. Because Eliot would _never_ hurt you. And I know what you're thinking, but you're wrong. You think that it's over, and that he'll never forgive you for doubting him. But you said it yourself. He loves you. He loves you _all._ I've seen it. And anyone who loves someone else wants nothing more than to be loved back. You had a moment of weakness, but I know that if Eliot could see you right now, he would know what I know: that he _is_ loved back. And he would do anything to stop your crying. You just need to find him and show him. And, trust me, he wants to be found. People run away to see if anyone will chase after them." Morgan smiled, thrust every ounce of sincerity into it that she could manage on a moment's notice. "Parker, it's going to be okay. You're all going to be okay."

                _You liar,_ whispered her subconscious. _You goddamn excellent liar._

                Parker sniffed, reaching up to wipe her eyes with the heels of her hands. "You..." Her voice faltered as she seemed to consider Morgan's words. "Do you really think so?"

 _Not at all, kiddo._ "Absolutely. Abso-freaking-lutely."

                The thief's lips twitched, like they were trying to decide between a smile and a frown. "We have to find him."

                "Yes, ma'am."

                "And fix this."

                "You got it."

                Nodding slowly, then a little faster, Parker got to her feet, Morgan following suit. She wiped her face again and ran one of the sleeves of her black shirt under her nose. "Thank you," she said, and this time, when she abruptly reached out for a hug, Morgan was ready.

                "There she is," Morgan murmured. "And you're welcome." She patted Parker's back before pulling away, putting on a wry smile. "All right. You've gotta get back downstairs. Ford probably thinks I murdered you."

                Parker returned a faint reflection of the smile and glanced past Morgan's shoulder to McMaster tied up in the chair. "What about him?"

                Truth be told, Morgan had almost forgotten about the station chief. He clearly hadn't done the same; his alert, cold eyes seemed to bore into hers when she turned to look at him.

                "Don't worry about ol' Carson," she said with a smirk she didn't feel. "You guys gave me Hardison's intel, and I'll call Dave in a second to put it to good use. I've got it from here."

                Parker took in a deep breath. Her cheeks were flushed from crying. "Okay," she said. Another breath, and she pointed at the notecard. "Really. Call. If you need something. Or... no, just call. Because maybe you won't need anything, or you'll pretend you don't need anything, like Eliot, and no one will ever call anyone, and everything will fall apart - "

                "Parker," Morgan interrupted before the woman could pull herself back down into another cyclone of misery. "I'll call."

                _That_ , at least, wasn't a lie. Or, she hoped it wouldn't be.

                Parker blinked and swallowed. "Oh. Okay," she said with sudden bravado in that endearing, awkward way she used when overcompensating. She drew herself up and nodded far too formally. "Good. So we'll talk, then."

                "So we'll talk," Morgan confirmed.

                As she was also wont to do, Parker suddenly shifted from the too-formal, ridiculous affect to childlike glee so fast that it almost gave Morgan emotional whiplash. She rubbed her hands together. "You could visit, maybe. We could rock climb! You could reach high things because you're tall. Oh, and I almost forgot - the last number on the card is for the best donut shop in Portland."

                "Couldn't forget that," Morgan deadpanned.

                "I love donuts." Parker took another deep breath, fully smiling this time as she let it out. "Okay. Find Eliot time." She paused. "Thanks, Mo."

                The nickname and the casualness with which it was tossed out temporarily stunned Morgan, to the point that she could barely manage a nod as Parker gave a little wave and slipped out of the office. But as she regained her bearings and recovered from the initial shock, a warm, pleasant sensation spread through her chest, like she'd just taken the first sip of a cup of tea on a dreary, damp day.

                Mo.

                It was what her friends called her. It was what she called herself.

                Under any other circumstances, it probably would have been a moment of small joy, of reflection over this truly unlikely friendship with the most prolific thief in the world - a young woman who loved to jump off of tall buildings and compare people to dinosaurs, who ate cereal like popcorn and would walk to the ends of the earth for the people she loved. But a chill chased the warmth through Morgan's veins, cutting the moment short.

                Because she had conned Parker into the reassurance and happiness that had led to the nickname. Because she had sent Parker back out into the world to look for a dangerous man who would somehow hurt her whether they located him or not. What Morgan had said about Spencer wanting to be found was almost certainly false… and even if they did find him, even if they gave him their most sincere apologies… people gave the "power of love" way too much credit. Eliot Spencer might have been surprisingly capable of being hurt by his friends, but the idea that he'd be the forgive-and-forget type was really taking it too far.

                But Morgan hadn't said any of that. She'd said the exact opposite. And as much as she wanted to justify the lies she'd so easily spun as being about fixing Parker's pain, a nasty, nagging part of her knew that she had only prolonged the inevitable, and she had ultimately just done it for herself - to compensate for her own inability to deal with Parker's breakdown.

                She sank into Dave's swiveling desk chair and passed a hand over her face, not caring very much whether McMaster saw. He'd seen everything else, after all, hadn't he?

                Since this job had begun, since she'd flown to Portland for the Leverage crew's help, Morgan had always gained some satisfaction from knowing that she held the moral high ground over these people. Everything she did was for the love of country, was for the sake of something much bigger than her own whims and desires. She was contracting these criminals, but they worked for her. They were serving the good because of her.

                But spinning a pipe dream for Parker that would never come true, just for some temporary relief for her goddamn aching, empathetic heart? That was for no one but Morgan Gray.

                What was it they called Sophie Devereaux?

                A grifter.

                Today, Morgan had been nothing more than that.

* * *

 

                "Holy crap."

                "I know."

                Dave clicked through a few more files stored on the USB drive. "I mean, holy _crap_. Carson was doing all of this? Carson McMaster. My _boss_."

                Morgan was standing behind Dave, arms crossed and leaning against the wall. They were alone in Dave's office, McMaster having been relocated to one of the camera-less interrogation rooms for now. "My boss, too," she said. "If briefly."

                Dave shook his head, blinking in obvious disbelief. He glanced up at her. "You do this everywhere they assign you?"

                "Take down assholes?"

                "Investigate your own people."

                The comment was probably meant to sting, but Morgan let it roll off with a shrug. "I was tracking down a lead with the Libyans. Led me right back here."

                "Yeah, well you could have read me in, you know."

                "I had to be sure it didn't go any deeper."

                "What? Me? Seriously, Mo?"

                "Sorry if I hurt your feelings, princess, but no one's above suspicion in stuff like this."

                Dave sighed. "Well you could have gone to Internal Affairs, at least. I mean, you've been working on this for weeks, all by yourself? I thought you were just being an insubordinate idiot."

                Morgan tried not to let her irritation show on her face, just like she was keeping in her disgust at herself for what she'd done to placate Parker.

                Internal affairs. Yes, that would have gone well, what with Carson McMaster having all the right friends in DC. Was Dave being serious?

                "You've got an awful lot of faith in the system," was all she said.

                He sighed and swiveled in his chair to face her. "All right, well, however you got all this stuff, you got it. I guess I'll make some calls, and I'm sure someone will be over soon to deal with him."

                Meaning that Morgan's window to ask McMaster about anything related to Gérard Nejem was going to close very soon.

                "I want to talk to him," she said.

                Dave raised an eyebrow. "Talk to him? You brought him in. You've got a flash drive full of evidence that shows he's been using classified intelligence for insider trading. What else could you possibly want to get out of this guy?"

                Even if McMaster hadn't been the one who'd killed Nejem, clearly he'd intended to. And if it wasn't because Nejem had learned about an attack, then there had to be some other connection between them. Somewhere in that connection was the answer to the mystery of the phantom terror threat and what had really happened to Nejem. McMaster was her only lead.

                No matter what Dave thought, it wasn't that she didn't trust him; she did. And while she hadn't been the one to give him the go-ahead to call her Mo, she probably would have considered them friends. But if she told Dave the whole story of Nejem and the bad intelligence about the threat, there were going to be more questions, more blanks she'd have to fill in with lies. As it was, she'd have to provide a statement, and McMaster was almost certainly going to try and hit her right back with allegations that she'd been working with some of the most high-profile thieves in the world to take him down. That had to sound ridiculous to anyone listening. So the less complicated she kept her story and the fewer avenues she provided that might lead back to Parker and her crew, the better. She needed to keep her story streamlined, and she would have to deal with getting to the bottom of the Nejem mystery on her own. Fortunately, she could do that under the auspices of her original assignment.

                "My work with the Libyans isn't over, right?" she said. "Gérard Nejem was our asset inside, once I flipped him. But someone clearly must have known he was talking to us and killed him. What if McMaster was the leak?"

                Dave blinked. "But why? Why would he do that?"

                "No idea," Morgan said. "But I met with Nejem multiple times, and you know how careful I was. A leak from our end would make sense. And you saw the stuff on the drive about McMaster trying to set up a black market in the refugee camp… maybe he offered them Nejem as a goodwill thing."

                Hm. Actually, that theory wasn't half-bad. But it still didn't explain why McMaster would have been the one who ordered the hit. Or why he'd called Nejem _"that bastard"_ when Morgan had mentioned him. Those were awfully strong words for collateral damage.

                No, there was something else. Something she was missing. But she was going to figure out what it was.

                Sighing, Dave turned back to his desk. "Okay. Fine. Go have a chat with Carson. I'll make some calls. If you find out anything - "

                "You'll be the first to know." _Well, not really._

                Dave just waved a hand noncommittally to show he'd heard her. Morgan showed herself out.

                She was halfway down the hall, already going over the questions she wanted to ask, when she reached into her pocket and realized that she didn't have her personnel badge to swipe into the interrogation room. In fact, Nathan Ford still had it. Great. That would be fun to get back.

                She turned around to head back to Dave's office. He'd closed the door behind her. She raised her hand to knock, but paused at a snippet of conversation from the other side.

                " - to talk to him. Said that she thinks he might have been the leak… oh, yeah, she's definitely full of crap."

                Morgan straightened, frowning. Had she been that transparent? That stuff with Parker must have really thrown her off her game.

                "No, I don't know what happened," Dave was saying. "But they were definitely here. Why else would she have had the cameras cut in the garage?"

                _'They'?_

                "Yes, sir.  They couldn't have left more than an hour ago, but I think their part in this is over. Morgan didn't feed me any more BS about Parker being Brigitte whoever, so I think she's moving forward on her own."

                Holy. Shit.

                The Leverage team. Dave knew about the Leverage team.

Morgan's mind began moving a million miles a second, all of the questions she'd had for McMaster completely overthrown by shock and disbelief. Dave knew about Parker, about her team, about Morgan going after McMaster with their help?

                Theory after incredulous, crazy theory began piling up, but they were all blasted apart by why she heard next.

                "Yes, of course, Mr. Nejem. I won't leave any loose ends."


	24. Chapter 24

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey there, everybody! I know... it's been a crazy long hiatus. I'm so sorry. Life really got in the way of any writing for the past six months. But I'm proud to present the next chapter, and to announce that, by jove, I AM GONNA FINISH THIS SUCKER!
> 
> Have a wonderful Easter weekend, and please forgive me for disappearing. I missed you all! 3
> 
> #LongLiveLeverage #quirkisback

_**Previously… on The French Kiss Job…** _

"Morgan Gray, alias Charlotte Dahl. Turned thirty this past December, joined the CIA when she was twenty-two. Tested out top of the class in interpersonal exercises."

"So she's basically a grifter.”

"Well… technically what she does is called 'asset cultivation and espionage,' but, yeah.”

* * *

 

"So," said Nate. "These are the kinds of clients Leverage International is taking on these days?"

"She's not a client," said Eliot and Hardison at the same time.

"Don't listen to them," said Parker. "She's definitely a client. They're just mad because she didn't tell us who she worked for to begin with. But you guys never would have listened to her if she'd told us!"

"You never would have listened to her either, Parker," spat Eliot. "When'd she tell you, huh? Once she already had you across the Atlantic?"

"I am perfectly capable of taking care of myself," Parker murmured, and her voice was steel, all of its normal sunshine gone. "And I trust her. She is our client."

* * *

 

Parker frowned. Why would Nate think that there wasn't actually an imminent terrorist attack? They had files full of surveillance and notes that Gérard Nejem had -

Oh.

"Our only tie to the idea of an attack was Nejem," she said slowly. "He's the real common link."

"Bingo," said Nate. "No one else has caught wind of anything to do with upcoming terrorism in Paris. It's almost like… Gérard Nejem made everything up."

* * *

 

"Nejem?" groaned Carson McMaster. "That… bastard…"

"You killed him, you son of a bitch!" Gray's tone was dark, touched with hysteria.

"No,” said Eliot. “He was going to, but he didn't. We heard him, remember? In his apartment. He was on the phone."

_"No, I won't be requiring your services any longer. … The target is already dead."_

"The target is already dead," Eliot repeated softly. "McMaster set up a hit… but it never happened. He didn't kill Gérard Nejem. Someone else did."

* * *

 

Something had been simmering between Eliot and Nate since Friday.

"Ah. Yes," said Nate. "I should have known."

Eliot's lip began to slowly curl into a snarl. "Listen, if you've got somethin' to say - "

"I should have known you'd be too proud, Eliot. Don't blame Parker for doing what she had to, to try and keep the team together. She shouldn't have had to. That was your job."

Eliot’s voice when he spoke was dark and cold… his scariest, angriest voice. "You bastard. We weren't ever anything but thieves to you, were we? You never stopped thinking you were better than us, not even at the end. No, perennial good guy Nate Ford gets to walk away and have his fairytale, white knight ending, while we keep cleaning up the world's shit."

The van felt like an airless vacuum. Parker couldn't breathe.

"You know, Eliot, you're right," said Nate. He turned back around and fixed the hitter with his own, dark glare. "Ultimately, it is my fault. It was a mistake to get out when I did." He paused. "I should have known better than to leave the team in the hands of a violent psychopath whose complete lack of self-control threatens everyone around him."

"Enough!" shouted Sophie. "Both of you! How dare you say such awful things to each other? You're bloody family, for God's sake!"

"No," Eliot rasped. "I'm not anyone's family."

He ran a hand through his hair. Then he buckled his seatbelt and stood. Before Parker could unglue her mouth to form a protest to stop him, before anyone could do anything, he’d opened the side door and jumped out. His boots hit the pavement, and the door slammed closed once more.

His footsteps took off - quick like a sprint but heavy because they were Eliot's and he ran like a freight train. And it was then, and only then, that the van - full of stupefied looks and the noxious weight of lingering anger and hurt - finally came to life. Morgan's jaw dropped open. Hardison leapt from his seat. Sophie threw open the driver's side door, and Nate buried his face in a hand.

But all Parker could see was the complete betrayal and utter despair that she'd glimpsed on Eliot Spencer's face right before he'd closed the door and run. Before he'd run away - from them.

And all she could feel was a terrifying certainty that he wasn't ever coming back.

* * *

 

Morgan refused to release Parker's gaze. "You had a moment of weakness, but I know that if Eliot could see you right now, he would know what I know: that he is loved back. And he would do anything to stop your crying. You just need to find him and show him. And, trust me, he wants to be found. People run away to see if anyone will chase after them. Parker, it's going to be okay. You're all going to be okay."

You liar, whispered her subconscious. You goddamn excellent liar.

The thief's lips twitched, like they were trying to decide between a smile and a frown. "We have to find him."

"Yes, ma'am."

"And fix this."

"You got it."

"Thank you," Parker said, and when she abruptly reached out for a hug, Morgan was ready.

* * *

 

Morgan turned around to head back to Dave's office. He'd closed the door behind her. She raised her hand to knock, but paused at a snippet of conversation from the other side.

"Yes, sir.  They couldn't have left more than an hour ago, but I think their part in this is over. Morgan didn't feed me any more BS about Parker being Brigitte whoever, so I think she's moving forward on her own."

Holy. Shit.

The Leverage team. Dave knew about the Leverage team.

"Yes, of course, Mr. Nejem. I won't leave any loose ends."

* * *

**Chapter 24**

Just stepping into the suite at the Mandarin Oriental made Hardison's heart hurt.

The first time he'd seen this place which had become their Paris base of operations, he'd been with Eliot. They'd been desperate then, maybe even thought they were all that was left of the team, if something happened to Parker. Hardison thought back to the cobbled-together briefing he'd given the hitter, the way Eliot hadn't been able to plug the stupid HDMI cable into its jack.

How could that have only been days ago? And how could Eliot be gone now?

 _I should have been faster,_ he kept repeating to himself. _I should have said something._

_I should never have let my best friend leave that van._

As the private elevator's doors closed behind them all, Nate and Sophie bee-lined to different locations: Nate to the terrace and Sophie to the upstairs bedroom. Neither had spoken since they'd dropped off Morgan Gray with Carson McMaster at the embassy.

Parker hadn't said anything, either, but there had been a purpose in her gaze when she'd climbed back into Lucille's French Cousin that hadn't been there before she'd gone upstairs with Gray. There was something on her mind besides just the blind guilt and grief the rest of them were clearly feeling. But she hadn't expressed it yet.

Hardison sank onto one of the couches in the sitting area and leaned his head back, staring at the high ceiling. It was all he could bring himself to do -- all he could think to do. His mind was like mud, and the dull, aching pain in his heart wasn't subsiding with the passing seconds.

Parker's face in his vision suddenly blocked the overhead lights. "I need you."

Another time, Hardison might have half-smiled at the unintended double-entendre, but right now all he could manage was a flat, "For what?"

"To find Eliot, of course."

So that was the spark in her eyes. Determination to find Eliot. Didn't she think Hardison had tried everything he could, already?

"Remember an hour ago when we went looking for him?" he said. "I gave it everything I had, but this is Eliot we're talking about. He knows to take the battery out of his phone and to crush the earbud. He moves from camera blindspot to camera blindspot. There's nothing to trace."

Parker crossed her arms. "I don't want to trace anything. I want to track Eliot."

"You say that like they're two different things."

"They are," she said and hopped over the back of the couch. She sat cross-legged beside him. "Eliot wants to be found. Because… people run away to see if anyone will chase after them. Even without his phone and avoiding cameras, we can track him. We'll figure out what to look for because we know him. Because…" She swallowed like she was holding back tears, but her voice remained steady. "Because we can't not find him. We have to tell him that we love him. No matter what."

Hardison took a deep breath.

What she was proposing was ridiculous. It wasn't an actual plan. What were they supposed to use to "track" Eliot that wasn't the usual? The power of friendship?

But when he met her eyes, she didn't waver. Her set jaw didn't budge. Her furrowed brow was creased with certainty, with resolve. She believed that they could find their hitter.

No, there was no evidence to support that belief. Yes, the odds were astronomically against them that they, a thief and a hacker, could track down a former mercenary who had eluded international authorities for over a decade.

But Hardison wasn't going to make the same mistake that he had in Seattle. He wasn't going to let this entire, messed up job be for nothing. Never again was he going to let her walk out the door thinking that she was alone and that no one believed in her. He'd promised himself that he would do whatever it took to make certain she knew how important she was to him, no matter the cost.

And that was when he realized that that was what Parker wanted them to do for Eliot.

He reached for her delicate, pale hand, clasping her warm fingers, and smiled. "All right," he said. "Even if we have to search every square inch of this city."

Parker smiled back. "Even if we have to search every square inch of the world."

And they would, if it came to that. Nothing was going to eclipse the priority of finding Eliot and bringing him back home to his team. There was no team without Eliot.

That realization hit Hardison in the gut with all the force of one of his best friend's punches, leaving him almost breathless. Nate and Sophie hadn't come to Paris to reform the old team. Without Eliot, the moment they all left this city, there would be no more Leverage International. Everything as they knew it would be over for good.

He took a deep breath in through his nose, felt his jaw set with purpose. "So where do we start?"

Unfolding herself from the couch, Parker got up and began to pace. Her blonde hair fanned out around her whenever she turned on her heel to head back in the opposite direction. "Like you said, we can't just try to follow him. So we have to get inside his head. Figure out where he's going because he's Eliot… and beat him there."

"Well, we can cross hospitals off the list, then."

"Exactly. See? We know him."

Now Hardison stood up and he reached for Parker's arm. She stopped pacing to gaze up at him expectantly. "We might as well do this out there," he said, gesturing at the suite's wall of floor-to-ceiling windows, through which a smattering of lights glittered in the darkness of early morning. "At least if we're out on the streets, there's an infinitesimal possibility we might run into him by chance." And maybe their crazy plan would feel less hopeless if they just started moving.

She nodded. "Yeah. Okay. Lucille's French Cousin?"

They left a note on the dining room table for Nate and Sophie, neither of them keen to disturb the mastermind or grifter in their current states of isolation, and got into the elevator. Parker reached for Hardison's hand as they began their descent.

"I should drive," she said. "You can fire up all your gadget stuff, just in case he makes a mistake."

Eliot? Make a mistake?

"Eliot wants to be found. Because… people run away to see if anyone will chase after them."

Well, it was worth a try, anyway.

The elevator doors slid open when they reached the basement level of the hotel, where the private parking lot was located -- apparently most parking in Paris was subterranean, not just that place where they'd cornered Carson McMaster. As the doors parted, they revealed a group of six or seven men in dark clothes, standing a few feet away like they'd been waiting for the elevator to arrive.

If Eliot had been with them, it wouldn't have taken him half a second to notice the men's very distinctive haircuts -- all buzzed so close to the head that they were nearly shaved. Hardison, though, spent three whole seconds wondering why anyone would be trying to get into a private lift before circling around to the question of whether these grumpy-looking dudes gave off a bit of an ex-military vibe.

Parker was maybe a second ahead of him, suddenly reaching for the button that would shut the doors again, but still too slow. The man closest to the elevator just stuck out an arm to reset the doors' sensor while two more guys behind him raised cocked semi-automatic handguns.

"Oui. Parker et Hardison. Nous les avons pris," said a guy in the back into a cell phone. Hardison didn't need to understand French to recognize his own name.

The man keeping the doors open unhooked something from his belt that looked like a can of hairspray and pointed the nozzle at Parker. She twitched like she might try to snatch it away from him, but only her eyes ended up moving, darting to the men with the guns who were keeping them like fish in a barrel.

The tip of the nozzle erupted, sending a cloud of gas directly into Parker's face. Hardison had barely registered it happening when he was suddenly caught in the crosshairs of the gas stream, too.

"P-Parker…" he managed to croak before his vision blurred. Parker's fuzzy outline made a seemingly slow-motion attempt to jab a flickering object--her tazer?--at the man with the gas canister.

The last thing Hardison heard was her crying out before the darkness overcame him.

* * *

 

Nate closed his eyes and gripped the terrace railing until he could feel his pulse in his palms. Even the world's biggest cities could seem quiet at two in the morning, and the silence of Paris right now was deafening.

_"You bastard."_

The word echoed like a rock thrown down an empty, bottomless well, cracking on rougher stones as it plummeted into nothingness.

_Bastard._

_Bastard._

_Bastard._

The Oklahoma accent was what did it. That very distinctive drawl. The way it spit out its consonants and elongated around its vowels.

_Bastard._

Slow and deliberate. Relentless.

_"We weren't ever anything but thieves to you, were we?"_

God, Eliot. Why that?

And it wasn't just the words. No matter how tightly Nate squeezed his eyelids together, he couldn't erase Eliot's face. Not the dark snarl that came with his rage, but the split second of bare, unconcealed hurt. Betrayal. So much pain wrapped up in a flash of the hitter's eyes before he'd gone for the throat.

If only Nate had focused on that pain. If only he'd had an ounce of empathy for that crucial moment. But no… no, all Nate Ford had was a countermove. Because he had to have the damn last word.

Because he was a bastard.

In the most disturbing recesses of his brain, Nate had always kept blueprints for the dismantling of his team. Not because he'd ever intended to use them, but because that was what he did. That was what he was good at: tearing people apart. He'd simply constructed the blueprints instinctively, storing them away like hydrogen bombs that he never thought he'd drop. And every once in a while he would update them. Just to keep them in working order. Just to make sure they would go off if he entered the launch codes.

At the beginning, the plan for each team member had looked very different, because each of them had a different weakness, a different chink in their armor that their coping mechanisms couldn't cover. But then things had begun to change, and the plans began to converge. As the team became a family, the chinks all aligned. The team became everyone's Achilles heel. All that were left for the individual blueprints were the perfect methods for bomb delivery.

For Eliot: an intercontinental ballistic missile.

_"I should have known better than to leave the team in the hands of a violent psychopath whose complete lack of self-control threatens everyone around him."_

The perfect hit. Maximum damage. Target annihilated.

Nate's arms began to tremble from strangling the railing as a fresh wave of horror and self-loathing washed over him, and his legs gave out. He collapsed to his knees. His lungs seemed to fail, his breath coming in short, shallow bursts. It wasn't until he tasted salt on his lips that he realized the shallow breaths were sobs.

He lost any sense of time as he clung to the wrought iron to keep from falling into oblivion, as Eliot's broken, betrayed face branded itself on the inside of his eyelids.

Eliot's vulnerability was the fear that he was incapable of anything but the destruction of everything he touched. Even though he was so clearly wrong, so clearly the glue that held the team together--a uniter, not a destroyer.

"It's me," Nate heard his own voice whisper, though it sounded far away, like a winter wind whistling through a void. "I'm the destroyer."

A scream suddenly echoed in the void – a scream with Sophie’s voice. And there it was… the missing part of the nightmare. He’d hurt everyone, not only Eliot. Of course the scream would belong to the Heart who kept them all afloat, who felt the deepest pains of the entire team all at once.

“Get your bloody hands off me!”

What?

“Nate! NATE!”

… That wasn’t his self-loathing subconscious screaming.

His eyes flew open, though they took a second to focus and they felt heavy and swollen from crying. Beyond the railing, Paris’s skyline twinkled, anchoring his senses in the present, in the reality where Sophie was screaming.

He wasn’t done with punishing himself – he might not ever be – but one of Nate Ford’s greatest talents kicked in at that moment: an uncanny ability to compartmentalize and carry the hell on.

He pulled himself to his feet, wobbling a little bit as he caught his balance. “Sophie?” he croaked, then tried again, loader: “Sophie!”

“Nate! Hurry! Get out… of… “ His fiancée’s voice trailed off, like she was falling asleep. Other voices – harsh and male and French – rose in its stead.

Nate bolted for the door leading onto the terrace, but froze with his hand on the latch when he caught sight through the window of a group of men hurrying down the staircase, three of them carrying Sophie’s limp, unconscious body between them.

_No!_

He didn’t bother to wonder why this was happening, or who these men were. He didn’t care that they were all carrying guns, or that there were seven of them and only one of him. His mind, even though it had never seemed capable of turning off before, shut down. And all that was left inside of him was the gut-wrenching force of deep, primal fear. And rage. So much rage.

A wordless roar escaped him. Instead of heeding Sophie’s warning to run, he threw open the door and charged the men holding onto her.  No weapon. No plan. It didn’t matter.

He wouldn’t let them take her.

He wouldn’t lose anyone else that he loved today.

He got within five feet, reached for her limp arm and missed. Then they were on top of him, hitting him like two hundred pound waves, pinning him to the floor, forcing an aerosol can into his face.

He barely registered any of it. Just kept fighting. Wriggling. Trying to get to Sophie.

They carried her away as he screamed.

 


End file.
